


The Baby Broker

by pkmoonshine



Category: Bonanza
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst and Humor, Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 64,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pkmoonshine/pseuds/pkmoonshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cartwrights find a baby left at their kitchen door.</p><p>All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are property of the author. The author is not in any way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise, and makes no money from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

PROLOGUE

 

In the dark early morning hours, she crept from the barn and empty stall, where she had made her bed for the past three nights, and shambled across a yard of frozen mud, heavily favoring her right leg. She gently cradled her tender burden in her arms, wrapped in the brilliantly hued quilt snatched from the darkest, farthest corner of the old armoire, where Grandmother had always kept the blankets and other bed linens. It was the only thing left to her that had belonged to a mother who had died suddenly in a Virginia City street accident when she was but a small child. She took cover amid a thicket of sapling trees and a tangle of scrub brush and vine growing near the back of the log house, yet well within sight of the kitchen door.

“Soon, Little One . . . . ” she whispered very softly to the tiny bundle, now stirring. “Soon . . . . ”

Little One.

All she gave him, all she COULD give him, was life. She couldn’t even give him a proper name, this tiny being she loved with a ferocity, and a passion that sometimes frightened her. Bitter tears welled up, stinging her eyes. She quickly buried her face against the edge of the quilt, to stifle the sounds of her sobbing. A thin, high pitched wail rose from the little one’s open mouth, as he sensed his mother’s distress.

“Shhh, Little One, don’t cry,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Please . . . PLEASE . . . don’t cry . . . . ”

Not now.

Not just yet . . . .

She hugged him closer, greedily savoring the memory of the warmth of his tiny body next to hers, the way he moved, his gentle weight resting in her arms. She began to rock back and forth slowly, her eyes never straying from the kitchen door. “It’s . . . it’s going to be all right, Little One, I promise,” she crooned very softly, “everything’s going to be . . . all . . . right . . . . ”

 

*********

 

PART 1

 

Ben Cartwright, dressed and ready for a full day’s work, stepped out onto the porch, with a mug of freshly made coffee, and drew in a long, slow breath of fresh, cold morning air. Overhead, the brilliant oranges, pinks, and gold, heralding the sunrise, had begun to fade into clear blue sky and the bright yellow light of day.

Though the cold of winter yet remained, small, subtle signs of spring had begun to manifest. The temperature more often than not climbed above freezing during the day, melting the thin sheen of ice that formed on the ponds over night, and forcing the snow’s retreat from all but the highest mountain peaks and places in the woods cast in deep shadow. New leaf buds, still tightly wrapped, had begun to appear on some of the trees, and tiny purple crocus buds had pushed their way up out of the soil in the flower garden Joe’s mother, Marie, had planted many years ago.

“ ‘Mornin’, Pa.” It was Hoss. He strode briskly from the barn toward the house, bundled up in an old jacket and scarf, the pants he generally wore when tackling the dirtiest jobs life on a ranch had to offer, and his oldest pair of boots.

“Good morning, Hoss,” Ben returned his middle son’s greeting and warm smile. His eyes dropped slowly to what remained of a filthy, tattered garment, loosely clasped in the big man’s hand. “What’s that?”

“Proof positive someone’s been sleepin’ in our barn last two or three nights,” Hoss replied, his smile fading. He held up the garment in hand for his father to see. It was the remnant of a green and yellow plaid flannel shirt, its colors faded to pastel as a result of many washings and exposure to the sun. “I’m . . . pretty sure this ain’t one o’ OURS.”

“No . . . it’s not,” Ben agreed. An anxious frown deepened the lines and furrows already present in his brow. “Where’d you find it?”

“In that empty stable by the door . . . just under the straw.”

“Anything missing?” Ben anxiously pressed.

“No, Sir,” Hoss replied.

“You checked?”

Hoss nodded with an amused grin tugging hard at the corner of his mouth and a wry roll of the eyes heavenward. “Yes, Pa . . . I checked. All the animals’re present ‘n accounted for--- ”

“None of them have been harmed in any way?”

“Nope,” Hoss replied. “None of our tools are missin’, ‘n the tack room’s just the way Li’l Brother ‘n I left it when we got through stablin’ our horses last night.”

“Any sign of trail?”

Hoss shook his head. “Whoever our, ummm . . . ‘guest’ . . . is always seems t’ get himself up ‘n out before the sun’s had a chance t’ come up ‘n thaw out the mud. Pa . . . . ”

“Yes, Son?”

“I . . . could be wrong about this, but my gut tells me the man who’s been sleepin’ in our barn last couple o’ nights doesn’t mean us any harm,” Hoss ventured as he and his father turned and ambled slowly back toward the house. “He hasn’t taken anything, ‘n he could’ve with the way he so quietly moves in ‘n out, ‘n nobody’s been hurt. I think he’s more ‘n likely some poor fella down on his luck.”

“You’re probably right, Son,” Ben had to agree, “but all the same, I’D feel a lot better if we knew who our star boarder was and a little something about him, especially since Doctor Martin’s finally given your sister the go ahead to ride a couple of days ago, which reminds me . . . did Stacy---?!”

Hoss grinned. “You betcha, Pa,” he chortled. “Li’l Sister was almost done saddlin’ Blaze Face when I came out t’ do the barn chores.”

“I can’t really say I’m surprised,” Ben sighed, inwardly relieved that, in all likelihood, his daughter didn’t encounter the man who had been sleeping in their barn the past few nights. “I just hope she didn’t ride all the way out to Ponderosa Plunge, not after being sick as she was nearly all winter. If she HAS . . . I’ll have her hide, so help me.”

“You needn’t worry none ‘bout THAT,” Hoss quickly assured his father. “Stacy told me she was just gonna ride out t’ that li’l meadow that’s about half way between here ‘n Ponderosa Plunge.”

“The one with that little stream running through it?”

Hoss nodded.

The anxious frown on Ben’s face deepened. “That’s a little MORE than halfway between this house and Ponderosa Plunge,” he said curtly. “I hope she bundled up well.”

“She did, Pa. I saw t’ that,” Hoss replied with an emphatic nod of his head.

“Did she give you any trouble?”

“Ohhh, she muttered somethin’ under her breath about knowin’ what one o’ them wrapped mummies in a museum feels like,” Hoss replied with a chuckle, “but she did what I told her.”

“Thank you, Son,” Ben murmured softly, relieved by the knowledge that Stacy was dressed properly, even if she had ventured out further this morning than he would have liked.

“Well . . . I’d best get this thing out t’ the trash heap,” Hoss declared, as he favored the tattered shirt he still held in hand with a grimace. “Hop Sing’d have my hide if I brought it in the house.”

“He would indeed,” Ben agreed. “I’ll see ya inside.”

As father and son parted company, a thin, high pitched wail broke the early morning stillness.

Hoss immediately froze in his tracks. “Pa?” he queried, as he turned once again to face his father. “What the heck was THAT?! I’d almost swear it sounded like a newborn kitten.”

“One way to find out.” Ben stepped down off the porch and made his way around toward the kitchen door. “The sound seems to be coming from around this way.”

Hoss silently fell in step behind his father. The wailing steadily grew in volume, and seemed to be coming from within the shelter of a wild bush that had taken root a few feet beyond the kitchen door. “Careful, Pa,” he warned, as he watched his father kneel down and gingerly part the dried leaves and branching stems.

Inside the bush sat a basket, covered over by a quilt. Ben braced himself, then slowly lifted the edge of the quilt and peered inside. He smiled upon seeing the pale cherubic face, with fat pink cheeks, and downy covering of light brown across the top of the head. “Well, who have we here?” he murmured as he reached inside and gently lifted the squirming bundle from the basket into his arms.

“Pa?!” Hoss stared down at the bundle nestled in his father’s arms with an almost comical look of disbelief. “Is that—?!”

Ben smiled. “Yes, Hoss, this IS a baby.”

Hoss bent down and retrieved the basket out from under the sheltering bush. It was old and worn. Some of the reeds used in its making were broken, opening up a large gaping hole on one side. “Hey, Pa . . . . ”

“Yes, Son? What is it?”

“There’s a note in the bottom o’ this basket,” Hoss replied. “It says . . . ‘Dear Cartwrights . . . please love my baby . . . ‘n look after him . . . ‘n give him a good home. He has no name . . . just Li’l One. Please don’t think me bad.’ ”

“Dear God . . . . ” Ben murmured softly, shaken to the core of his being. He unconsciously hugged the baby lying in his arms a little closer.

“I . . . I can’t believe this,” Hoss muttered. “Somebody left a baby . . . right here . . . at OUR back door?!”

“It would seem so,” Ben said quietly. “He’s still warm, thank the Lord. That tells me he’s NOT been out here by himself all that long, but we’d still better get him inside pronto.”

“ ‘Morning, Pa! ‘Morning, Big Brother!” Stacy greeted Ben and Hoss with a cheerful smile and wave as she walked Blaze Face into the yard.

“Hey! ‘Mornin’ yourself, Li’l Sister,” Hoss waved back, and returned her smile.

“Good morning, Stacy.”

Stacy dismounted, then crossed the yard on an intercept course toward her father and big brother, leading Blaze Face behind her. “Wha’cha got in that bundle, Pa?” she asked.

Ben turned toward his daughter and smiled. “Come see for yourself, Young Woman.”

Stacy kept firm hold of her horse’s lead with one hand, while carefully parting the blankets with the other. “It’s a baby!” she exclaimed in surprise.

“Um hmm,” Ben responded.

“Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

“Figures!” Stacy quipped. “Where’d he come from?”

“Hoss and I found him in a basket under a bit of scrub brush around the side of the house.”

“Pa, that’s not the answer you gave ME the first time I asked you where babies come from . . . . ”

Ben turned and found his youngest son standing at his elbow, wearing his green jacket over his nightshirt. His eyes sparkled with impish delight and there was a naughty grin on his face.

“As I recall,” Joe continued, falling in step along side Hoss, “it was some long, convoluted story about pink and blue cabbage leaves.”

Ben halted mid-stride, and drew himself up to the very fullness of his height as he turned to face his youngest son. “Joseph Francis, I’ve never . . . EVER . . . not in all my born days told you, or your brothers either, a . . . a ridiculous story like that,” he returned, outraged and highly indignant.

“I, umm . . . think your memory’s a mite faulty, Li’l Brother,” Hoss chuckled. “PA didn’t tell ya that story . . . . ”

“Surely not Mama or Hop Sing?!” Ben queried, horrified at the very thought.

“Nope,” Hoss shook his head. “Ross Marquette did the night, we . . . uhhh . . . that we . . . . ” His voice trailed off into strained silence, upon feeling the rush of blood to his face. His eyes shifted very quickly from his father’s face to his own feet.

“Was it the night you, Adam, and Ross took Joe to that burlesque show . . . when you were supposed to be at home watching him?” Ben asked, turning to his middle son with face set into an impassive mask, and left eyebrow slightly upraised.

Hoss’ jaw dropped. “Huh-huh-huh-how . . . how’d ya find out about THAT?!” he demanded.

“Let’s just say I have my ways, and leave it go at that,” Ben said with a complacent smile.

Hoss swallowed nervously.

“Aww, Hoss, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Joe quipped. “The statute of limitations has to be long past on that little incident, and besides . . . you’re ’way to big for Pa to be dragging out to the barn for a necessary talking to.”

“Don’t be too sure of THAT, Young Man.” The impish gleam in Ben’s dark brown eyes gave lie to his stern, authoritative tone of voice.

“Pa, I SWEAR . . . the ONLY things I remember about that night ‘s the music and the sparkly costumes,” Joe said very quickly.

“I believe you, Son.”

“You do?”

“Of COURSE I do. After all, you WERE only about six or seven at the time,” Ben said with a chuckle.

“Pa?” Stacy ventured.

“Yes, Stacy?”

“What’re we going to do with him? The baby, I mean.”

“First thing I’M going to do is take him inside and get him cleaned up,” Ben said. “I . . . think . . . this young fella just dropped a load.”

“Hooooo-wheee! He sure ‘nuff did, Pa . . . a real big one!” Hoss declared, wrinkling his nose.

“Joe?”

“Yeah, Pa?”

“How soon can you be ready to ride into town?”

“Not long . . . just give me five minutes to throw on some clothes and splash some water on my face,” Joe replied.

“I want you to go and fetch Doc Martin,” Ben said. “Tell him about the baby and ask him if he can come out and give the little guy a once over.”

“Pa . . . I’m ALREADY dressed, and Blaze Face is still saddled,” Stacy protested.

“I don’t want YOU overdoing things, Young Woman,” Ben admonished his daughter sternly. “It’s only been a couple of days since Doctor Martin told you that you could ride.”

“But, Pa . . . . ”

“No buts! I’m not taking ANY chances on you suffering a relapse, heaven forbid,” Ben succinctly nipped her protest in the bud. “You WERE pretty sick this past winter . . . . ” he added, his tone softening.

“ . . . and speaking for myself, it’s a heckuva lot easier trying to live with an ornery, cantankerous, fire breathing ol’ mule than it is trying to live with YOU, especially when you’re on the mend,” Joe teased.

“You of all people saying that about me’s like the pot calling the kettle black, Grandpa,” Stacy immediately returned, then stuck out her tongue.

Joe returned the gesture.

“Joe, YOU need to get going,” Ben exhorted his youngest son.

“Yes, Sir,” Joe murmured softly. He turned, with the intention of heading back toward the house, then paused. “Pa?”

“Yes, Joe?”

“Should I ask Doc Martin about a wet nurse? That little guy’s gonna be hungry after you get through cleaning him up.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Ben said gravely.

“While you’re gettin’ yourself dressed, Li’l Brother, I’ll g’won in the barn ‘n saddle Cochise,” Hoss promised. “I’ll stable Blaze Face, too, whilst I’m at it.”

“Thank you, Hoss, but I can take care of Blaze Face,” Stacy protested.

“I know y’ can, Li’l Sister, but right now y’ need t’ take care o’ YOURSELF, just like Pa said,” Hoss gently reminded her.

“You guys are gonna spoil me rotten!”

“GONNA spoil you rotten, Stace?” Joe quipped.

Stacy stuck her tongue out at Joe once again.

Joe grinned and this time thumbed up his nose.

“All right, Children, settle down,” Ben admonished his youngest son and only daughter with a big smile. “Joe . . . . ”

“Yes, Sir. I’m going,” Joe replied. He, then, turned, and beat a straight path across the yard to the front door.

“ . . . . as for YOU, Young Woman . . . . ”

“Yeah, Pa?”

“Before you know it, Doctor Martin’s going to give you his official clean bill of health,” Ben said. “When he does, you’ll be expected to fend for yourself. So my advice to YOU in the meantime is sit back and ENJOY being spoiled rotten while you can.”

“Yes, Pa,” Stacy acquiesced reluctantly.

“Besides . . . I could use some help getting THIS little fella cleaned up.”

Stacy blanched, and for a moment appeared to be unsteady on her feet. “I, uhhh . . . sure hope YOU know what to do, Pa,” she said nervously. “Because I don’t know anything about taking care of babies . . . HUMAN babies, that is.”

“You needn’t worry about a thing,” Ben hastened to assure his daughter. “My skills may be a little rusty, but I’ve had plenty of experience in looking after human babies.”

 

“Breakfast ready two minutes,” Hop Sing greeted father and daughter as they entered the house together. He scowled upon catching sight of the old, well worn basket Stacy carried. “Hey! What you do?!” he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at the basket. “Hop Sing just put that on trash heap . . . and . . . where Mister Hoss?”

“Hoss will be right in,” Ben hastened to assure the Ponderosa’s number one cook, “just as soon as he’s finished stabling Blaze Face and saddling Cochise.”

The scowl on Hop Sing’s face deepened. “Saddle Cochise?!” he echoed, unable to quite believe his ears. “Why Mister Hoss saddle Cochise?”

“So I can ride into town and fetch Doc Martin,” Joe replied, as he sauntered down the stairs, with face washed and wearing the clothing he had worn the day before, donned in haste.

The tirade sitting right on the very tip of Hop Sing’s tongue died a quick and sudden death. “Doctor Martin?!” he queried, then groaned. “Uh oh! If Miss Stacy have another relapse--- ”

“You needn’t worry about THAT, Hop Sing,” Stacy said very quickly. “I’m fine.”

“Then who---?!” Hop Sing’s anxious gaze moved from Stacy to Ben, then over to Joe.

A high pitched wail rose, as if in answer, from the soft bundle of quilt nestled in the arms of the Cartwright family patriarch.

Hop Sing started violently, jumping backward about three feet. “What make all that racket?” he demanded, glaring murderously at the quilt.

“Oh, come on, Hop Sing.” Joe, his eyes twinkling with impish delight, moved toward his father and gently pulled back the edge of the quilt. “See? It’s a baby.”

“Baby!? First it stray cat, then it stray puppy, next bird with broken wing, then stray raccoon that get out of cage and make mess of Hop Sing’s kitchen! NOW it stray baby! Mister Cartwright, when you gonna tell Mister Hoss . . . NO MORE STRAY?!”

“I’M the one who found this little fella,” Ben freely admitted, “but, it’s not like he wandered onto the place like the stray cat . . . puppy . . . or raccoon.”

“Ok, so baby have help!” Hop Sing growled. “But no matter. Baby STILL stray . . . and stray baby need diaper. Lots and lots and lots of diaper. Lots of diaper for baby mean lots of laundry for Hop Sing! Too much laundry! Hop Sing quit! Go to San Francisco. Help number six cousin in restaurant!” With that, he stormed back into the kitchen muttering under his breath in Cantonese.

“All things considered, I’d say THAT went very well just now,” Joe said quietly, after Hop Sing had returned to the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.

“Yes, it did . . . all things considered,” Ben agreed. “ . . . uhhh, Stacy?”

“Yeah, Pa?”

“Would you mind going out to the kitchen and asking Hop Sing to boil some water so I can get this young man cleaned up properly?” Ben asked.

Stacy looked over at her father through eyes round with horror. “Pa . . . y-you want me to walk right out into that kitchen and ask Hop Sing to boil water after . . . after all THAT?! That’s like asking me to walk into a lion’s den!”

“Would you rather walk into a lion’s den or change this guy’s diaper?” Ben asked.

“Walk into a lion’s den, Pa,” Stacy immediately replied, almost without thinking, “any day of the week.”

Ben grinned. “I kinda thought so . . . . ”

 

“Pa?”

“Yes, Dio?”

“Has Aunt Elena had the baby yet?”

Adam Cartwright turned to his young daughter and shook his head. “I haven’t heard,” he replied.

“I sure hope THIS time Aunt Elena and her baby will be ok,” Dio murmured softly.

“Until I hear something definite, I’m going to assume that no news is good news,” Adam said. “In the meantime, Princess, YOU need to get yourself dressed and ready for school. Mrs. Cortez told me a few minutes ago that breakfast is almost ready.”

Dio groaned. “Do I HAFTA go to school?”

“Of COURSE you do,” Adam replied, taken aback by her question.

“But, Pa . . . I was hoping, kinda . . . that you ‘n Ma’d let me stay home until we hear about Aunt Elena and her baby.”

“I know you’re worried, Princess,” Adam replied, his tone and manner softening, “we ALL are. However, you’re not going to do Aunt Elena, her baby, or yourself any good by staying home from school and worrying yourself sick.”

“Would it be ok for me to say a prayer for Aunt Elena, Uncle Miguel, and the baby when we have chapel today?” Dio asked.

Adam smiled. “Yes . . . that WOULD be all right,” he replied, “and very much appreciated.”

After eating breakfast with his son and daughter, named respectively Benjamin Eduardo and Dolores Elizabeth for their grandparents, Adam prepared their lunches while the children gathered together schoolbooks, pencils, paper, and their homework assignments due that day. He took them to school along with Ramon and Joachim Mendez, the sons of the man who worked for him as gardener and handyman, as was his custom.

“Hullo, Mister Cartwright,” Juan Mendez greeted Adam upon his return home with a big smile after his employer had set the brake on the two-seater buckboard and jumped down. He was a short, stolidly built man, aged ten years Adam’s senior. Juan had married late in life to a woman much younger, who had died not long after the birth of their youngest son, Joachim. “Any word about Mrs. Elena and the baby?”

“I’m sorry, Mister Mendez,” Adam replied, shaking his head. “I haven’t heard a thing. Did Mrs. Cartwright by chance return home while I was taking the kids to school?”

“No,” Juan shook his head. “Need a hand stabling the horses?”

“Yes, thank you,” Adam replied, grateful for the offer. “I’ve been meaning to ask you . . . how’s your mother doing? I’d heard she was ill this past winter . . . . ”

“Fine . . . just fine, Mister Cartwright, thank you for asking,” Juan replied, as he and his employer set to work unhitching the horses from the buckboard. “In her last letter, my sister said that Mama’s up, ‘n around, issuing orders like an army drill sergeant, driving them all CRAZY.”

Adam chuckled softly. “Your mother sounds a lot like my father when HE’S on the mend,” he observed lightly.

Juan threw his head back and laughed out loud. “Speaking of your papa . . . how’s HE doing these days?”

“He’s doing very well,” Adam replied as the two men led the horses into the stable, and there set themselves to the task of giving them a thorough brushing. “When we visited Pa and the rest of the family last summer, he . . . well, he was looking a mite older and grayer around the edges, but from what I can see, he’s not slowed down any.”

“He’s got that young brother of yours to keep him on his toes,” Juan reminded with a wry chuckle.

“ . . . and my young sister does HER part in keeping Pa on his toes, too,” Adam added. He led Sinbad, a big black even tempered gelding, to his stall. Juan placed Sinbad’s brother, Agamemnon, Aggie for short, into the adjoining stall. Aggie was big like his older brother, black, with four white socks reaching nearly to his knees.

“Speaking of your brothers . . . and sister, too . . . when’s your papa going to bring THEM for a visit?” Juan asked. “That big brother of yours owes me a rematch in throwing horseshoes.”

“Next time I write, I’ll be sure to tell HOSS what you said,” Adam promised. “THAT’LL get him here like a shot.”

“ . . . uhhh . . . Adam?”

He turned and found his wife, Teresa, standing at his elbow. Her red, swollen eyes and cheeks stood out in stark contrast against her pale, drawn face. “Oh no,” he murmured softly. “The baby . . . . ?”

“A boy,” Teresa replied, her voice catching. “He . . . he died a few minutes after birth.”

Juan immediately crossed himself and murmured a quick prayer for the repose of the young soul who had taken leave of this life so soon.

“Miguel was able to baptize the child before he died, and . . . and when the priest came, he gave him the last rites,” Teresa continued.

“I’m glad . . . for Elena and Dolores’ sake,” Adam said softly. His wife’s young sister-in-law and her mother were the truly devout members of the family these days.

“Mrs. Cartwright?”

“Yes, Mister Mendez?”

“I’m very sorry to hear about Mister Miguel and Mrs. Elena’s baby,” Juan very solemnly offered his condolences. “I know she wanted this baby so badly.”

“Thank you,” Teresa responded, while very sadly shaking her head. “Yes. Poor Elena . . . she’s yearned for a baby of her own since she was a small child playing with dolls.”

“You be sure to tell Mister Miguel if there’s anything I can do . . . anything at ALL . . . . ”

“Thank you, Mister Mendez, I’ll be sure to tell him,” Teresa promised. “Adam?”

“Yes, Teresa?”

“I’m going to g’won in and lie down for a while,” Teresa said. “I’m so exhausted . . . it’s a wonder I’m not falling asleep on my feet.”

“You go ahead in,” Adam said. “I’ll be along as soon as Mister Mendez and I finish taking care of the horses.”

“Mister Cartwright, please. You g’won in . . . see to Mrs. Cartwright. I’ll finish stabling these two . . . . ” He inclined his head toward Sinbad and Aggie. “ . . . and I’ll see to Sunshine over there, too.” This last he added with a pointed glance over at the placid buckskin gelding still hitched to Teresa’s buggy.

“Mister Mendez, I--- ”

“I can manage,” Juan hastened to reassure. “Now you g’won. Mrs. Cartwright needs you.”

“Thank you,” Adam said gratefully. Leaving the care of their horses in Juan Mendez’s capable hands, he left the stable and crossed the back yard to the kitchen door. He found his wife standing before the large bay window in the family room that faced out onto the formal flower garden that was the absolute pride and joy of the Mendez family, father and sons. He wordlessly crossed the room, gently slipped his arms around her waist, and held her close.

Teresa closed her eyes and for a time leaned against him, drawing upon the loving strength and comfort he offered without reservation, through the simple elegance of touch. “Oh, Adam,” she murmured at length, her voice tremulous, “it’s . . . it’s NOT fair!”

“No,” Adam heartily agreed. “It’s not.”

“I-I can’t understand it,” Teresa continued, as one tear, then another slipped down over her eyelids and began to flow down her cheeks. “Why do people who . . . who already h-have more children than they want or . . . or c-can possibly care for . . . why do THEY go right on h-having child . . . after child . . . after child every year, while . . . while a woman like Elena . . . who yearns s-so desperately for a child . . . is denied?!”

“I wish I knew the answer to that myself,” Adam replied . . . .

 

“ . . . everything appears to be in order, Mister Lindsay,” Alpheus McKinley, Esquire, said quietly, as he placed the last page of the contract he had just read on the table before him. He reached his pudgy hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew an envelope.

“This is the thousand dollars we agreed upon up front, plus reimbursement for all of your out of pocket expenses to date,” Alpheus continued. “Upon delivery you’ll be paid the remaining nine thousand dollars owed you, plus any other expenses incurred between now and the date final delivery is made to my clients.”

Tobias Lindsay took the proffered envelope and placed it securely in the inside pocket of his own jacket.

“Mister Lindsay . . . . ”

“Yes, Mister McKinley?”

“Mister and Mrs. Cunningham are very anxious as you might imagine,” Alpheus said. “I realize there’s no way of knowing the exact date, but can you give me a reasonable estimate as to when they can expect delivery?”

“I’m told it’ll be any day now,” Tobias replied, with a smug, triumphant grin. He rose. “It was a pleasure having lunch with you, Sir. Thank you. I’ll be in touch . . . . ”

 _“Of COURSE you will, you greedy, cold hearted, self serving son-of-a-bitch!”_ Alpheus silently responded, as he watched Tobias Lindsay’s retreating back with a glare filled with angry, self righteous contempt. Procuring infants who had been orphaned, or who had come from families too poor to adequately care for them was one thing. But a man of obvious means, like Tobias Lindsay, selling his own flesh and blood . . . .

Alpheus shook his head and grimaced.

 

Tobias made his way back to the Grand Victoria Hotel, savoring the fruits of his hard won victory. He was a big man, tall, with broad shoulders tapering down to a trim narrow waist, a head full of thick, blonde, wavy hair and piercing grayish green eyes. He might have been looked upon as a very handsome man, with his wide face, even features, and cleft chin, had it not been for the rigidly set jaw and scowl permanently etched into his brow.

“Good afternoon, Mister Lindsay,” the concierge greeted him politely, as he stepped up to the desk. “What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to see whether or not there’s any messages for me,” Tobias said.

“Yes, Sir. There is,” the concierge replied. He turned and withdrew the plain envelope addressed to “Mister Lindsay, Room 326,” from that numbered room’s mail slot. “The Western Union man delivered it about an hour or so after you left for your appointment with Mister McKinley.”

“Thank you.” It took nearly every last ounce of will Tobias Lindsay possessed to keep from snatching the envelope right out of the hand of that prissy little man standing behind the desk.

“You’re welcome, Sir. I hope it’s GOOD news . . . . ”

 _“She’s had the baby . . . finally!”_ Tobias silently mused, nearly salivating in anticipation as he flipped up the unsealed envelope flap and withdrew a piece of paper neatly folded in half. His elation, however, was very short lived.  
The message was short and to the point:

 

“Tobias Lindsay, Esq.  
Grand Victoria Hotel  
San Francisco, California

Cara missing. Ran away from home. Reported to sheriff. Search underway. Any instructions?

Vivian Crawleigh  
Carson City, Nevada.”

 

“That bitch! That damned stupid little BITCH!” Tobias swore under his breath. The scowl on his face deepened, and he crumpled the message and envelope together into a tight ball.

“M-Mister Lindsay? Is . . . everything all right?” the concierge ventured warily, then mentally braced himself.

“Fine,” Tobias snapped. He immediately straightened his posture and took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he apologized through clenched teeth, laboring valiantly to keep his voice calm and even. “A business matter has come up at home requiring my immediate attention,” he continued. “I’ll be checking out within the hour. If you would be so kind as to make arrangements for my luggage to be delivered to the Overland Stage depot and prepare my bill?”

“Yes, Sir.”

 

Doctor Paul Martin carefully placed the baby down into the bassinet, borrowed from one of the married ranch hands whose young son had recently outgrown it. The Cartwright offspring stood together at the head of the bassinet, while their father sat down on the edge of his bed. “He seems to be perfectly healthy, Ben. I don’t have a scale, but he feels good and solid when I pick him up. No sign whatsoever of any kind of disease, sickness, or physical abuse. He doesn’t appear to be malnourished, although the little fella IS hungry . . . . ”

“Speaking of hungry, were you able to find a wet nurse?” Ben asked.

Paul nodded. “I’ve asked two. Irma Fielding and Eleanor Keene. Both have had babies within the last couple of months or so, and both are well able and willing to provide for this little one along with their own. I sent Lily in my buggy to fetch Mrs. Fielding at the same time I rode out here with Joe. They should along any minute.”

“Thank you, Paul,” Ben said gratefully.

“Any idea who the mother is?”

“None. I was hoping that YOU might be able to tell ME.”

“Sorry, Ben.” Paul shook his head. “I’d say this little guy was born sometime in the past four or five days . . . a week, perhaps at the very outside. The last babies I helped deliver were Irma Fielding’s and Eleanor Keene’s . . . both girls, both born six and eight weeks ago, respectively.”

“No one due to give birth any day now?” Ben pressed.

Paul shook his head. “I have only two patients at the moment who are expecting,” he replied. “One’s due sometime within the next six months, the other in three or four.”

“So there’s no possibility of those two patients being this li’l fella’s mother?”

“None.”

“Paul . . . . ”

“Yes, Ben?”

“I’d like to find the baby’s mother . . . if possible . . . . ” Ben said quietly. “I think SHE needs help every bit as much as that li’l fella lying in the bassinet in front of ya.”

“You’re probably right,” Paul agreed. “You think maybe you CAN help her and this little guy here?”

“I don’t know,” Ben replied. “But, I’d sure like to try . . . . ”

 

“Father Brendan, that’s another thing I’m going to miss when I leave for Denver,” Mother Catherine Margarita said with a wistful smile, gesturing with a broad sweep of her right arm toward the magnificent vista of mountain, sky, tree, and field that stretched out before them.

She and the semi-retired monsignor had taken their mid-day meal together every Wednesday, since her elevation to mother superior of the nursing order that served Saint Mary’s Hospital eleven and a half years ago. Friends and colleagues, both had been exiled to the wild western frontier by their respective bishops; he for choosing to err on the side of mercy, and she for following the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. They were a pair of not-so-young idealists, passionate and zealous in their service of the God both of them worshiped, blessed with an abundance of vim and vigor . . . “and chock full of piss and vinegar,” as Father Obadiah Kramer, present monsignor of Saint Mary’s and the man to whom both answered, oft times wryly observed.

“That’s one of the things that’s KEPT me here,” Father Brendan Rutherford said quietly, with a beatific smile.

“You also have good friends here,” Mother Catherine observed, “like the Cartwrights, for instance. Interesting thing that . . . . ”

“How so?”

“They’ve NEVER been members of Saint Mary’s . . . nor do I recall ever having seen them attend Mass. How in the world did you ever become such good friends with them?”

Father Brendan smiled. “Actually, two of the Cartwrights WERE regular attendees in years past,” he replied.

“Oh?”

“Ben’s late wife, Marie, and their son, Joe,” the priest said. “She was born and raised as a Catholic. She left the church for a time, then returned soon after Joe was born. She started to bring Little Joe as soon as he learned to walk.”

“That, of course, was a bit before my time here at the convent. He must’ve been a real holy terror back then,” Mother Catherine said, remembering some of the stories her late older sister, Hazel Gibson, Joe’s teacher up through the eighth grade, had told. “Hazel said on many occasions that boy couldn’t sit still for five minutes if his life depended on it.”

“That was true most of the time,” Father Brendan agreed with a chuckle. “Still is. But in church, that boy was good as gold.”

“Somehow, I find that very difficult to believe.”

“I might also, had I not seen for myself.”

“How do you account for that, Father?”

“I don’t know,” the priest said thoughtfully. “Maybe it had to do with the Mass itself . . . the bells, the incense, the guilt work, the pictures in the stained glass windows at each Station of the Cross, our robes, the Latin. Then again, it may have been Marie’s influence. Little Joe Cartwright’s always been a rough and tumble youngster, very rambunctious, always sticking his hands into everything, but while Marie was still alive, he was more settled somehow.”

“MOTHER! MOTHER!” A young woman, garbed in the white habit of postulant, bolted out through the French doors, standing wide open. “MOTHER, YOU’VE GOT TO CO— ” She stopped abruptly, mid-sentence upon seeing the priest. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she meekly apologized, “I did not know Father Rutherford was here.”

“It’s quite all right, Bridget,” Mother Catherine said, rising. “What’s the matter?”

“Two men just came in with a young girl, Mother. They found her along the side of the road barely conscious.”

“Where are they now?”

“Sister Anne took them to one of the hospital rooms.”

“Thank you. Tell Sister Anne I’ll be there directly.”

 

“Bobby and I found her lying by the side of the road, Ma’am,” Mitch Cranston, one of the Ponderosa ranch hands, said. He held his hat in front of him, its rim clasped tight in both hands, and nervously shifted from one foot to the other, and back again. “We were out along the main road, headin’ back from takin’ fence supplies to Candy, one of our foremen. I . . . . ” He looked over at Bobby Washington, standing beside him stiffly erect with hands clasped in front of him. “I thought she was dead, ‘cause she was lyin’ so still. But when Bobby an’ I jumped down to make sure? She moved her head, ‘n kinda groaned, too, like she was in pain.”

“She was alone when you found her?” Mother Catherine asked.

“Yes, Ma’am. Bobby ‘n I . . . when we saw she was alive . . . we brought her here straight away, knowing you have a place to care for her.”

“Thank you . . . you did the right thing,” Mother Catherine said quietly.

“Mother?”

“Yes, Sister Anne?”

“May I speak with you . . . . ” Her eyes darted over toward Father Brendan and the two Ponderosa ranch hands, standing together at the foot of the girl’s bed.

“Mother Catherine, do you have further need of either of these gentlemen?” Father Brendan asked.

“No, not at the moment.”

“If you DO need us for anything, Ma’am, you can reach us at the Ponderosa,” Mitch said.

“Thank you.”

“If you wish, Mother Catherine, I can see these gentlemen out,” Father Brendan offered.

“Thank you, Father.” After the men had gone, Mother Catherine turned her attention to Sister Anne. “All right, Sister, you may speak freely.”

Sister Anne swallowed nervously. “The girl’s entire body is like ice, Mother, and her feet are severely frostbitten,” she began. “We’re trying to warm her with that fire in the fireplace, and the extra blankets. She’s drifting in and out of consciousness, calling for a little one.”

“A little one?”

“A baby, I think. HER baby, Mother.”

“HER baby?!” Mother Catherine echoed, incredulous.

“Yes, Ma’am. She’s just given birth . . . sometime within the past few days, I think. She shows no sign of hemorrhaging, at least nothing that I can see from a cursory exam, and she is lactating.”

Mother Catherine turned to Sister Wilhelmina, a young novice, who was assisting Sister Anne in caring for their new patient. “Sister, if you hurry, you might be able to catch Father Brendan and the two men from the Ponderosa. I would like you to send one of them to find Doctor Martin.”

“Yes, Mother . . . . ”

 

“ . . . the good news is, she’s expelled the afterbirth. There’s no hemorrhaging, no sign of infection or other complications related to childbirth,” Paul Martin reported upon completion of his examination.

“ . . . and the bad news, Doctor?” Mother Catherine wryly prompted.

“The bad news is . . . she’s suffering from hypothermia . . . both feet are badly frostbitten . . . she’s malnourished . . . and she’s running a low grade fever,” Paul replied. “I . . . trust you and the sisters caring for that poor child have seen the wounds under her clothing?”

“Indeed we HAVE,” Mother Catherine replied, her brows coming together, forming a dark murderous scowl. “Whoever was responsible ought to be taken out and horsewhipped within an inch of his . . . or her life.”

“I agree with you one hundred percent,” Paul replied. “I cleaned out the open, infected stripes on her back and bandaged them. They should be cleaned again and the bandages changed this evening. Beginning tomorrow morning and continuing for the next week, I recommend cleaning the wounds and changing the bandages at least twice a day.”

“We will, Doctor.”

“I’m deeply concerned about what appears to be a severe burn on the back of her left leg, below the knee,” Paul continued. “I opened the wound, drained it, and cleaned it out as best I could, but the infection goes deep. Between that and the severe frostbite in the toes of the same foot . . . . ” His voice trailed away to an ominous silence.

“That poor, poor child,” the mother superior moaned softly. “I knew the toes on her left foot were a foregone conclusion the minute I saw them, but . . . are you also saying there’s no chance at all of saving her leg?”

“A slim one, perhaps,” Paul replied. “I instructed Sister Anne and that young novice assisting her . . . . ” He frowned, trying to recall the name of the latter.

“You must mean Sister Wilhelmina.”

“Yes . . . Sister Wilhelmina,” Paul replied. “I gave them complete instructions as to how to drain and clean the leg wound. I’ll be around to see the patient again later on tonight.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“In addition to following my instructions for treating her leg and the infected wounds on her back, keep up your efforts to gradually warm her, try to get some liquids in her, as much as you can . . . as OFTEN as you can. Water . . . weak tea . . . chicken broth . . . anything!” Paul said. “Has she given you her name? Told you where she’s from?”

“No.” The mother superior shook her head. “Though she stirs from time to time . . . she’s not yet roused to full awareness. Doctor Martin . . . . ”

“Yes, Mother Gibson?”

“About that leg wound . . . to be blunt, Sir, it’s MY considered opinion that it was no accident, but was intentionally inflicted.”

Paul frowned. “If you’re asking me whether or not I agree . . . I do. There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever that burn on her left leg was intentionally inflicted,” he said curtly.

“Doctor Martin?”

He turned and found Sister Anne standing at his elbow. “Yes, Sister?”

“The girl was wearing these when the men from Ponderosa brought her in,” Sister Anne reported, holding up a pair of brown pants, threadbare, with ragged cuffs, and a hole in one knee, along with what appeared to be an oversized heavy flannel shirt. “She also had a large pair of woolen socks on her feet that seemed to be in one piece, and rags wrapped tight around the socks. I . . . instructed Sister Wilhelmina to throw the socks and the rags in the trash bin. Both were soaking wet and filthy.” She grimaced upon uttering that last.

Paul Martin took the shirt from Sister Anne and silently studied it for a moment, noting that although filthy, it seemed to be in one piece. “This shirt’s miles too big for that young girl,” he quietly observed. “This HAD to have been taken from a clothes line somewhere along the way . . . and the pants, more than likely, removed from someone’s trash heap.”

“Doctor, are you saying this girl’s a runaway?” Sister Anne queried with a frown.

“Taking into account these ill-fitting garments AND her grievous injuries, I’d say THAT’S a pretty foregone conclusion,” Paul replied, “and to be frank, Sister, I can’t say as I blame her. I have no way of ascertaining exactly how long she’s been out fending for herself, but if I were to hazard a guess? I’D say she more than likely left home BEFORE giving birth.”

“That poor child!” Sister Anne murmured softly as she stole a quick glance over her shoulder at their mystery patient, who had just sunk back into unconsciousness.

“What of her baby?” Mother Catherine asked. “Dear God, I . . . I hope she didn’t simply abandon it somewhere . . . . ”

“No, Mother . . . .” Paul said slowly, thoughtfully. “She DIDN’T abandon her baby, leaving it somewhere to die.” He favored the nuns with a weary smile. “In fact, I think I know EXACTLY where her baby is.”

 

“Hey, Pa . . . I . . . I think he likes me,” Stacy murmured, awestruck, as the baby lying safely ensconced in her arms reached up and touched her chin.

Ben glanced up from the ledger lying open before him on his desk, and smiled. “Of COURSE he likes you,” he said. “He’s warm, he’s had a nice bath, his belly’s full thanks to Mrs. Fielding, and right now, he feels very secure. What’s not to like?”

“He didn’t seem so fond of me when we were trying to get him cleaned up earlier this morning.”

“That’s because you weren’t real sure of yourself, and he could sense that,” Ben explained. “Now, you know a little more what you’re doing.”

“ . . . and he can sense that, too?”

“Um hmm.” Ben nodded.

“All right, Li’l Sister . . . YOUR time’s up!” Hoss declared as he strode from the kitchen, through the dining room, and on into the great room. Joe trotted briskly at his older brother’s heels, wiping his wet hands on his shirt. “MY turn to hold the li’l fella.”

“YOUR turn?!” Joe echoed. “Whaddya mean it’s YOUR turn?”

“You sat right there . . . . ” Hoss inclined his head toward the blue chair, “all mornin’ long holdin’ the li’l guy . . . leastwise ‘til it was time for Mrs. Fielding t’ give him his breakfast . . . . ”

“Yeah!” Joe growled. “THAT was all of FIVE minutes!”

“That was five minutes more ‘n the rest of us got,” Hoss immediately returned.

Ben laid the pencil in hand down on his desk next to his ledger, then rose. “Boys . . . and you, too, Stacy. I’M gonna settle this matter in a fair and impartial way,” he said, as he crossed the room toward the fireplace where his three younger children were now gathered.

“Whaddya gonna do, Pa?” Hoss asked. “Have us draw straws?”

“Nope,” Ben replied. “I’m invoking ‘Pa’s Privilege.’ ”

Joe frowned. “ . . . uhhh . . . what’s ‘Pa’s Privilege’ . . . exactly?”

“ ‘Pa’s Privilege’ means . . . it’s MY turn to hold the li’l guy!” Ben declared, as he held out his arms expectantly toward Stacy.

“Um hmm! Yep! That’s real fair ‘n impartial,” Hoss observed with a grin and with tongue very firmly planted in cheek.

Stacy gently placed the baby into Ben’s outstretched arms with a doleful sigh, then sat down on the settee. “He’s a cute li’l guy isn’t he.”

“Aww, he sure is,” Hoss agreed, with a big smile. He waited until his father had settled himself comfortably in the big red chair, before leaning over and gently chucking the baby’s chin. “Oochie, woochie, coochie, coo,” he cooed, his voice rising to a near melodious high falsetto. “Oochie, woochie, coochie, coo-ooo-oooo . . . . ”

“Oochie . . . w-woochie . . . coochie . . . coo?!” Joe echoed, then dissolved utterly into peal after peal of uproarious laughter.

Hoss turned and glared murderously at Joe. “Dadburnit, Li’l Brother! If you don’t quit that cacklin’ like a hysterical hyena . . . you’re gonna end up scarin’ this poor li’l fella outta ten years growth, ‘n givin’ him nightmares t’ boot.”

“Oochie . . . w-woochie . . . . ” Joe rolled right off the settee, with tears of mirth streaming down his face.

Acting purely on animal instinct and a potent rush of adrenalin, Stacy leapt to her feet less than a heartbeat from being dragged down to the floor along with her brother. “Hey! Watch it, Grandpa!” she growled.

“As I recall, Joseph Francis . . . I distinctly heard someone who sounded an awful lot like YOU cooing something along the lines of ‘oohh da widdy biddy boo’ just before you left to get Doctor Martin earlier,” Ben said quietly.

Hoss threw back his head and roared.

“I’ll have the lot of ya know THAT happens to be one hundred percent, pure, honest-to-goodness genuine baby talk,” Joe immediately retorted.

“ . . . and how, exactly, does ‘oohh da widdy biddy boo’ translate into plain English, Grandpa?” Stacy asked.

Her question elicited another peal of mirth from their biggest brother.

“ . . . uhhh . . . Mister Cartwright?”

Hoss immediately sobered upon glancing up and finding Irma Fielding standing in their midst.

“It’s time for me to give him his lunch and put him down for a nap,” Irma said as she reached down to take the baby from Ben.

“Didn’t you just get through feeding him?” Ben asked with a puzzled frown.

“That was breakfast . . . nearly three hours ago,” Irma said primly. “I’m . . . sure I needn’t tell YOU how important it is to keep babies on schedule.”

“She’s right about that, Little Fella,” Ben said quietly, as he surrendered the baby lying peacefully in his arms over to the wet nurse. “You have yourself a good lunch and nap . . . . ”

“Pleasant dreams, Little Guy,” Stacy said wistfully.

Irma Fielding settled the baby in her arms, then turned and started for the stairs. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as she stopped suddenly and turned. “Mister Cartwright . . . . ”

“Yes, Mrs. Fielding?” Ben responded.

“I, umm . . . know it’s not MY place to tell you how to . . . to, ummm run your household, but . . . my daughter . . . well, she’s not exactly used to . . . to high spirited family members . . . not while she’s, ummm . . . trying to take her nap?!” Irma ventured, hesitant and unsure.

Ben smiled. “We’ll do our best to be quiet, Mrs. Fielding,” he promised, “won’t we?” This last was uttered with a pointed glare at his two younger sons and only daughter.

“ ‘Course we will, Pa,” Hoss immediately promised. “Sorry, Ma’am. I hope we didn’t disturb ya too much just now . . . . ”

“It’s quite all right,” Irma replied.

Stacy seated herself on the arm of the red chair next to her father, and watched as Irma carried the baby boy upstairs. “Pa?” she ventured, after the wet nurse and baby had disappeared from view.

“Yes, Stacy?”

“Why would a mother stick her helpless newborn in a basket half falling apart and just leave him on some stranger’s door step?” she asked, perplexed and bewildered. “Mrs. Fielding seems to think she’s some kind of a cold hearted, selfish . . . uhhh . . . sorry, Pa. If I told ya exactly what Mrs. Fielding said, I have a feeling you’d be hauling me out to the kitchen to wash my mouth out with soap.”

“It’s all right, Stacy . . . I think I have a pretty good idea what Mrs. Fielding might have said,” Ben replied. “Do YOU have any thoughts on the matter?”

“I think I can understand where Mrs. Fielding’s coming from . . . a little,” Stacy said slowly, thoughtfully. “But, I don’t think she’s right. Not after reading that note.”

“I agree with YOU, Young Woman . . . one hundred percent,” Ben said very quietly.

“Pa?”

“Yes, Stacy?”

“What are YOUR thoughts about whoever left that li’l guy upstairs on our doorstep?” Stacy asked.

“After reading that note, I’m inclined to think that li’l fella upstairs was left by s-someone . . . who . . . who loved him so much, she . . . she w-was willing to give him up so that h-he might have a better life than she’s . . . than she feels able to g-give him,” Ben replied, his voice all of a sudden unsteady. He was astonished at the depth of emotion he felt welling up inside.

Stacy quietly reached down and took Ben’s hand in both of her own.

“She?” Hoss queried as he placed his hand on his father’s shoulder and gently squeezed.

Ben swallowed and took a shallow breath. “She,” he reiterated. “The more I think about it, the more I’M convinced that the baby’s mother’s the one who left him with us.”

“How do you figure, Pa?” Joe asked.

“I think all three of ya read the note found in the baby’s basket . . . . ”

Hoss, Joe, and Stacy nodded.

“She could barely write . . . but she knew our names,” Ben continued. “I’ll betcha anything she’s been out there . . . watching us . . . making sure we’re the kind of people who could be trusted to give her baby a good home.”

“ . . . ‘n I’LL just betcha anything SHE’S the one who’s been sleepin’ out in our barn the last few nights,” Hoss said slowly.

“That baby was warm, too, when I lifted him out of that basket,” Ben continued. “She must’ve been waiting out near the back door, holding him in her arms to keep him warm, until she was sure we were up and about.”

“Sounds to me like she needs help, too . . . every bit as much as her baby does,” Joe observed quietly.

“That’s why I’D like to find her,” Ben said.

A knock on the door brought the conversation between the members of the Cartwright family to a halt.

“I’ll get it,” Stacy said, as she slid off the arm of the red chair.

The caller was Doctor Paul Martin. “Good afternoon, Stacy,” he said after she had invited him inside. “I’m delighted and pleasantly surprised to see you following doctor’s orders for a change, and taking things easy.”

“Between Pa, Hoss, Joe, and Hop Sing, I’m afraid I don’t have much choice,” she said with a long suffering sigh and a wry roll of her eyes heavenward.

“Good for them!” Paul declared with an emphatic nod of his head.

“Pa’s right over there . . . next to the fireplace,” Stacy said.

Ben and both of his sons rose as the doctor made his way across the room to the fireplace, around which the family was gathered.

“Please . . . sit down, Paul,” Ben invited. “Hop Sing’ll be serving lunch soon, if you’d care to stay . . . . ”

“Thank you, Ben, I will,” Paul eagerly accepted the invitation.

“Stacy . . . . ”

“Yes, Pa?”

“Would you mind going out into the kitchen and asking Hop Sing to set an extra plate?” Ben asked.

Stacy nodded, then turned heel and headed for the kitchen.

“So . . . what brings ya back OUR way, Doc?” Hoss asked.

“I think I know where that baby’s mother is,” Paul Martin said coming straight to the reason for his return visit. He sat down on the settee next to Joe.

Ben turned and favored the sawbones with a sharp glare. “Where?”

“She’s at the convent hospital under the care of Mother Gibson and two of the sisters,” Paul said quietly. “Seems a couple of your men found her out along the road somewhere between here and Virginia City.”

“How is she?”

“She was half frozen to death by all accounts when your men found her and took her to the convent, Ben. By the time I arrived, the nuns had her stabilized and resting comfortably enough, but she’s still in a very bad way.”

“You’re certain this girl is the mother of that li’l fella upstairs?” Ben pressed.

Paul nodded. “Reasonably,” he replied. “Based on what the mother superior and the other nuns told me, this girl HAS given birth within the past week.”

“Any idea who she is?” Ben asked.

“Strange thing that . . . . ” Paul murmured softly.

“Oh?”

“I can’t for the life of me recall ever having ever met her before, but . . . . ” Paul sighed. “I can’t quite shake the feeling I know her or that I’ve seen her around somewhere.”

“Has she been able to tell ANYONE her name, or where she’s from?” Ben pressed.

“Mother Gibson said that she stirs from time to time, but hasn’t fully regained consciousness,” Paul explained. “I asked the mother superior to send me word when she does.”

“Say, Doc . . . y’ think it’s possible this gal’s a runaway?” Hoss asked.

“I’m reasonably certain she IS a runaway, Hoss,” Paul replied, “though as I told Mother Gibson, I have no way of knowing how long that girl’s been out fending for herself and that baby. Given her physical state however, I’m of the mind she left home BEFORE her baby was born.”

“You mean to say that she gave birth to that young man upstairs out along the road somewhere?!” Ben demanded, appalled, frightened, and angry at the very thought.

Paul nodded.

“I don’t understand it! What in the ever lovin’ world could she have been thinking of . . . running away from home . . . knowing full well she was so close to giving birth?!” Ben exclaimed.

“There’s no doubt in MY mind it was an act of desperation,” Paul said in a grim, somber tone of voice. He, then, shared with Ben, Joe, and Hoss the details concerning the girl’s injuries.

“Doc . . . are you sayin’ that gal’s ma ‘n pa . . . . ?!”

“If NOT her parents, Hoss, then someone else close to her . . . someone who’s more than likely a member of her family,” Paul replied.

“I . . . I can’t believe it!” Hoss murmured softly, while slowly wagging his head back and forth. “H-How could ANY Ma ‘n Pa turn on their own flesh ‘n blood like that?” His face was nearly white as a sheet and he had drawn his hands together into a pair of tight, rock hard fists to quell their trembling.

“Unfortunately . . . I’m afraid such is all too common,” Paul said sadly as he reached out and placed a comforting hand against the big, sensitive man’s forearm.

“Can’t you do somethin’ about it?” Hoss demanded, appalled and angry at the very thought.

“I wish I could,” Paul replied. “I wish to high heaven I could, but the law looks upon children as being little more than their parents’ possessions. The thought of a man going to the gallows for stealing a horse, but walking away scot free for beating his own child to death . . . because in the end it all comes down to being HIS word against the doctor’s . . . infuriates me like nothing else can, Hoss.”

“Makes ME appreciate all the more that we . . . Adam, Hoss, Stacy, and I . . . were brought into this world and raised by a real good man like our pa,” Joe said soberly.

“You took the words right outta my mouth, Li’l Brother,” Hoss agreed whole heartedly.

“Thank you, Boys . . . for your vote of confidence,” Ben said quietly, still feeling sick at heart over everything Paul Martin had just shared with them. “Paul?”

“Yes, Ben?”

“Would it be possible for me to see this girl?”

“You’ll have to get permission from Mother Gibson, of course, but I don’t see any reason why she wouldn’t allow you a brief visit at least,” Paul replied. “I told her I was reasonably sure the girl had left her baby here with you and your family. However . . . . ”

“What?” Ben demanded.

“I think it might be a good idea for you to bring Stacy along,” Paul suggested.

“Stacy?!” Ben echoed, incredulous. “I . . . can half way understand this girl’s reluctance to talk to me . . . and perhaps the nuns as well, since they’ve, like as not, never been married or had children . . . but I’d think someone like Mrs. Fielding, or better yet, your wife, Lily, would be more appropriate. Stacy . . . . ” he paused for a moment to cast a quick glance over his shoulder in the direction of the dining room and kitchen door, “Paul, my daughter’s NOT much more than a child, for heaven’s sake.”

“Neither is that girl,” Paul declared. “I’m guessing, Ben . . . but my gut tells me she’s Stacy’s age, maybe a year older at the very outside.” An exasperated sigh escaped from between the sawbones’ lips, thinning now with his rising anger. “If I could have but one wish . . . it would be that EVERY young woman out there was as fortunate as your daughter . . . AND mine . . . . ”

“I-I’ve always tried to protect Stacy as much as I could,” Ben stammered, taken aback by Paul Martin’s sudden burst of anger, “and I know you and Lily have done the same with Janie.”

“It’s MORE than simply protecting them, a LOT more,” Paul said. “It’s loving them, respecting them, treating them as valuable, cherished members of the family, and most important accepting them as they are. If you knew how many people . . . even people we’re well acquainted with who try and force their daughters into being something they’re not— ” He broke off suddenly, and favored his old friend with a contrite, sheepish half smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to climb up on my soapbox just now.”

“I understand, Paul . . . NOW,” Ben said quietly. “I don’t think I would have if Stacy hadn’t come to live with us, however.”

“Are you still willing to try and help this girl?” Paul asked.

“Absolutely.”

 

“Adam?”

He turned from the half completed house plan spread out on the drawing table before him and wordlessly held out his hand to the woman standing framed in the open door to his study, clad in nightgown and robe.

Teresa immediately and without hesitation stepped across the threshold and crossed the room. Sleep had been fitful at best, filled with strange, disturbing dreams. Though the images and content fled from her memory upon waking, the vague uneasiness invoked by those dreams remained.

“I was just about to g’won out to the kitchen and ask Mrs. Cortez if she might fix me a sandwich,” Adam said, as he took hold of his wife’s hand. “Would you care to join me?”

“I’m . . . not really hungry, Adam,” Teresa replied, punctuating her words with a yawn.

“Even so, you need to eat something, Sweetheart,” Adam gently admonished her. “Mrs. Cortez came to the door and reminded me in no uncertain terms that here it is well into the afternoon and YOU haven’t had so much as a bite to eat.” He paused briefly, then added. “She’s worried.”

A tiny, wry smile tugged hard against the corner of Teresa’s mouth. “Bless her heart,” she murmured softly, then sighed. “I . . . guess I can manage a couple slices of toast and a cup of tea . . . . ”

 

“Mrs. Cartwright, I’m so sorry to hear about your brother and sister-in-law’s baby,” Adela Cortez said very quietly, as Teresa and Adam ventured into the kitchen. “How are they . . . uhhh . . . ?!”

“The doctor gave my sister-in-law a sedative . . . a very strong one,” Teresa replied, her voice filled with sadness and deep concern. “Hopefully she’ll sleep the rest of the day and through the night. Poor Miguel . . . . ” she sighed and dolefully shook her head. “He’s devastated of course, and . . . very concerned about Elena.”

“Such a terrible shame,” Adela murmured softly. “Will you be returning to your brother’s home?”

Teresa nodded. “Later . . . this afternoon . . . after Benjy and Dio return home from school. Mother and Elena’s sisters are there now.”

“You and Mister Cartwright seat yourselves at the dining room table,” Adela said briskly, as she dabbed her eyes against the sleeve of her cornflower blue blouse. “I’ll serve up lunch . . . . ”

“Mrs. Cortez, I’m not very hungry--- ” Teresa started to protest.

“Chicken soup . . . a slice of toast, and a good strong cup of tea,” Adela said. “You need something more substantial than a just slice of toast, Mrs. Cartwright.”

“She’s right, Teresa,” Adam said quietly. “If you’re going to be any kind of help to Miguel and Elena, YOU need to keep up your strength.”

“Mister Cartwright and I . . . well, we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but on THIS, we agree one hundred percent,” Adela said firmly, before shooing them out of her kitchen.

Adam dutifully escorted his wife out to the dining room.

“Oh, Adam . . . . ” she moaned very softly, then buried her face in her hands.

Adam immediately gathered Teresa in his arms and held her close while she wept. “That’s right, Sweetheart,” he murmured softly, his own voice breaking as he reached up and stroked her long, coal black hair. “That’s right . . . let it out. I’m here . . . I’m right here . . . . ” He felt her arms encircling his shoulders, her fingers tightly grasping the material of his shirt.

Adela Cortez nodded with approval as she turned and very quietly closed the door between the kitchen and dining room, leaving the Cartwrights to their grief.

In the meantime, she would see to keeping the chicken soup warm.

 

“Adam . . . after . . . after the priest left?” Teresa said haltingly much later, when the two of them at long last sat down to a light repast of hearty chicken soup, buttered toast, and hot tea. “The doctor told Miguel, Mother, and me that . . . . ” She fell silent, upon feeling again the acrid sting of tears in her eyes.

Adam placed his hand over top hers and patiently waited for her to continue.

Teresa closed her eyes for a moment, and swallowed. “The d-doctor said that . . . that Elena . . . that in all likelihood she’ll NEVER bring a healthy . . . l-living baby into this world,” she said, her voice shaking.

For a moment, Adam felt as if he had just been sucker punched below the belt. Had he not already been sitting, he was almost certain he would have fallen. “Oh no, no,” he murmured softly, his head wagging slowly back and forth. “Teresa, is he . . . is he sure?”

Teresa vigorously nodded her head. “After all the miscarriages . . . and . . . and t-two babies now . . . carried to . . . t-to full term, yet born still as if . . . as if they’d come too early . . . h-he’s sure,” she replied. “He did tell Miguel that h-he . . . that he knows of a specialist in S-San Francisco, if . . . if they want another opinion . . . . ”

“I guess it’s much too soon for them to decide whether or not they want to see the specialist . . . . ”

“I don’t think either one of them should be making that kind of a decision right now,” Teresa said. “They need time, Adam . . . . ”

“Yes, indeed,” Adam voiced his whole hearted agreement. “Teresa?”

“Yes, Love?”

“When the children come home from school . . . do you want me to break the news to them?”

Teresa silently thought the matter over, then slowly shook her head. “I think BOTH of us need to tell them,” she decided.

“You sure you’ll be up for it?” Adam gently pressed.

“Yes . . . I will,” Teresa promised. “I just need some time on my own to pull myself together.”

“You’ve got it,” Adam replied. He leaned over and planted a chaste kiss on her forehead. “If you need me . . . . ”

“ . . . I know exactly where to find you,” Teresa said.

 

The following morning, right after breakfast, Ben and Stacy left for the convent hospital to see the young woman Paul Martin strongly suspected to be the mother of the baby boy left at their kitchen door the day before.

“Mister Cartwright, please come in.” Mother Catherine stood in the open door to her private office and gestured for Ben and Stacy to enter with a broad sweep of her arm. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“Thank you,” Ben said politely as he stepped into the spacious office, sparsely furnished. Stacy quietly followed close at her father’s heels. “Mother Gibson, I’m sure you remember my daughter, Stacy.”

“Yes, of course,” Mother Catherine responded with a warm smile. “Good seeing you again, Stacy. Your friends, Molly O’Hanlan and Susannah O’Brien, told me you’ve not been well this past winter.”

“I was down with a cold over Christmas, but I’m doing much better now,” Stacy replied, deliberately omitting that her cold had worsened as the result of a mad ride into the cold and snow to search for her brother, Joe. [1] Just after the first of the year, her cold had gone into pneumonia. She grinned. “In fact, Doctor Martin told me a couple of days ago I can go out for short rides on Blaze Face.”

“I’m very glad to hear that you’re doing so much better,” the mother superior said, returning Stacy’s smile.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” Stacy said politely. “Molly and Susannah told me that you’re . . . leaving Virginia City?”

“Yes. My sister, Louisa, is very ill . . . too ill now for her husband and daughter to care for her properly,” Mother Catherine replied, her smile fading. “Since I am the only one in the family with nursing skills, it makes sense that I should go to her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mother Gibson.”

“Thank you, Stacy.”

“As am I,” Ben said, as he and Stacy seated themselves on the tall, straight back chairs facing Mother Catherine’s desk. “If there’s anything we can do, please . . . don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you, Mister Cartwright, but apart from prayer, there’s nothing much anyone can do. Louisa’s in God’s hands now,” Mother Catherine said quietly, “and as Father Brendan observed yesterday afternoon, she’s in the best place she CAN be. I . . . presume you’ve come about the girl your men found along the road?”

Ben nodded. “Yesterday morning, I found a young baby, no MORE than a week old, left just outside our kitchen door. Paul . . . Doctor Martin . . . is of the opinion that your patient may be the baby’s mother.”

“Mister Cartwright, may I speak frankly?” the mother superior asked, casting a sidelong glance in Stacy’s general direction.

“Yes, please . . . feel free,” Ben replied, hoping the mother superior hadn’t noticed the sarcastic rolling of Stacy’s eyes.

“Our young mystery patient upstairs has INDEED given birth,” she began, “within the time frame corresponding to the age of the baby in YOUR custody. Sister Anne, the nurse in charge of the young woman’s care, told me that from all indications, the birth was largely without complications. Doctor Martin’s examination confirmed this.”

“Thank the Lord for that,” Ben murmured softly, his voice filled with a mixture of gratitude and deep, profound relief.

“Amen,” Mother Catherine whole heartedly agreed.

“Has the girl yet regained consciousness?” Ben asked.

“Yes, though she sleeps a great deal,” the mother superior replied. “Sometimes, in her sleep, she cries out for a little one. We assume this little one is her baby.”

Ben and Stacy exchanged troubled glances. “There was a note with the baby left on our door step,” the former said, reaching into the inside pocket of his vest. He withdrew the folded slip of paper and handed it to the mother superior.

Mother Catherine accepted the proffered slip of paper, and carefully unfolded it. She read over it once, then once again. “Mister Cartwright, it would appear that my mystery patient is, indeed, the mother of the baby presently in your care.” She carefully refolded the note and handed it back to Ben. “I’m very relieved to know for certain now that she didn’t simply abandon the child somewhere.”

“Has your patient told you her name? Where she came from?” Ben asked, as he took the note from Mother Catherine and returned it to his vest pocket.

“No,” Mother Catherine shook her head. “She refuses to tell us. When we press, she becomes very agitated, insisting that she can’t tell us . . . that her baby’s safety depends on her silence.”

“Have you asked her about her little one?”

“Yes. The only thing she’ll tell us is that he’s safe, that no one can harm him where he is now.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then sighed. “I can’t blame her for not wanting to say where she came from, however. Mister Cartwright . . . . ”

“Yes, Mother Gibson?”

“What . . . exactly . . . did Doctor Martin tell you about the young patient in our care?”

Ben shared with the mother superior everything that Paul Martin had told him the day before, when he had returned to tell them about the girl their own men had found lying by the side of the road. This included the doctor’s theory about the girl being a runaway, and the reasons, which drew him to that conclusion.

Stacy, upon hearing this for the first time, was visibly shaken by this revelation. She quietly reached over and took hold of her father’s hand.

“Sorry, Young Woman,” Ben murmured ruefully, as he gave her hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “We should have talked about this yesterday, after Doctor Martin left.”

“ ‘S ok, Pa.”

“Mother Gibson,” Ben said, returning his attention once again to the mother superior, “if you’ve been expecting us, as you say . . . then you must know why my daughter and I are here.”

“Doctor Martin told us that you’d probably want to do something to try and help this girl and her baby,” Mother Catherine said.

“I do . . . if she’ll let me,” Ben said quietly. “Would it be possible for us to see her?”

“We’ll need to check with Sister Anne. She’s the one largely responsible for the girl’s care,” the mother superior said, rising. The Cartwrights followed suit. “If you’ll both follow me?”

 

“Pa?”

“Yes, Stacy?”

“I . . . I think I KNOW her,” she whispered, stunned, shaken to the very core of her being.

“Y-You do?”

Stacy nodded. She and her father stood just beyond the threshold of the mystery patient’s room. The girl they had come to see was in the bed, lying on her back, propped up by three large downy pillows. Her head was turned toward the door just enough to allow Stacy to see her face. Mother Catherine and Sister Anne stood between the open door and their patient, conferring in low voices, darting occasional glances at the patient, who appeared to be sleeping, and the Cartwrights.

“Who is she?” Ben asked, sotto voce.

“Cara. Cara Lindsey.”

“Cara . . . . ” Ben murmured very softly. “Cara . . . Cara Lin---!!” He abruptly broke off and looked over at Stacy. “Tobias Lindsey’s daughter?!” he queried, taken completely by surprise.

Stacy nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Pa, I’m sure.”

A decade ago, Tobias Lindsey was a bright young man, a lawyer, who had just won a stunning upset in the court room, clearing Mitch Devlin [2], a close friend of Joe’s, of a murder charge. The evidence against Mitch, though largely circumstantial, was nonetheless very compelling and damning. Tobias had worked diligently to unearth the truth, risking not only his reputation and future, but his life as well. His diligence paid off very handsomely. He not only succeeded in clearing his client of all charges, but found out who the real guilty party was in the process.

Hailed by the Territorial Enterprise as a brilliant young lawyer with a very promising future, Ben’s own lawyer, Lucas Milburn, offered Tobias Lindsey a junior partnership in his own law firm. Tobias, desiring to link with Lucas’ rock solid reputation and prestige, already well established, had eagerly accepted the offer.

Three years later, Tobias Lindsey drowned that bright promising future at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, on the heels of his wife’s sudden, tragic demise. His only child, a daughter, Cara, had turned almost overnight from a bubbly, outgoing little girl to a child shy to the point of withdrawn. A few months after Ben and his sons had brought Stacy home with them from Fort Charlotte, Tobias’ mother, Matilda Lindsay, took her son and granddaughter to live with her in Carson City.

“Mister Cartwright . . . Stacy . . . you may see the girl now.” It was Mother Catherine. Sister Anne stood behind her with a sour look on her face and arms folded tightly across her chest.

“Thank you, Mother Gibson,” Ben responded politely. He gestured for Stacy to enter the room first.

“Just a moment,” Sister Anne said curtly, as she moved to block the door.

“Yes, Sister?” Ben queried.

“Mister Cartwright, I’m sure you and your daughter mean well,” Sister Anne continued in a tone of voice ever so slightly condescending. She focused her entire attention on Ben, ignoring Stacy as if she weren’t there. “But . . . well, to be blunt, Sir, if the matter were left entirely to MY discretion, I would NOT allow you to visit the girl at this time.”

Her words drew a sharp glare from the mother superior.

“I’m sorry, Mother Gibson,” Sister Anne said, defiant, yet very much on the defensive, “but I would be less than honest if I didn’t say so.”

“Is there any reason why I should NOT allow Mister Cartwright and his daughter a short visit?” Mother Catherine demanded, with hands firmly planted on her hips and left eyebrow slightly up raised.

“The patient is still VERY weak,” Sister Anne replied. “It’s a chore just to get her to take broth and water, as YOU well know. Because she’s still so weak, she sleeps a great deal. More often than not, she falls asleep in the middle of prayer or conversation.” This last she said with a pointed glance in Ben’s direction. “She’s also depressed . . . distressingly so. One wrong word . . . one wrong look, the child bursts into tears and weeps for . . . for hours, sometimes. A couple of times, we’ve had to sedate her.”

“Sister, as a nurse, I’m sure you know that . . . sometimes . . . though not always . . . a new mother will fall into a bout of depression,” Ben said very quietly. “More often than not, it passes after a few weeks, but occasionally those bouts can be very severe.”

“This girl seems to be growing WORSE,” Sister Anne said bluntly.

“It could be ONE reason she’s depressed is because she loves her baby, but feels she HAS to give him up,” Stacy quietly observed.

“I think Stacy makes a very valid point,” Mother Catherine immediately interjected, upon taking due note of Sister Anne’s sarcastic roll of the eyes heavenward. “Sister Anne . . . . ”

“Yes, Mother?” she responded in a sullen, angry tone of voice.

“Please bear in mind that Mister Cartwright and his family want to HELP this girl and her baby,” the mother superior said in a very quiet, yet very firm tone of voice.

“I . . . I’m sure Mister Cartwright and his family MEAN well--- ”

“Sister,” Ben interjected, “my daughter and I are well aware that your patient is still very weak and that she tires easily. I promise you that we’ll keep our visit brief. . . and we’ll do our best NOT to upset your patient. I can see very clearly that you care about this girl a great deal.”

“Well, of COURSE I do,” Sister Anne said brusquely. “I see this girl . . . and any other patient given to my care as a trust from my mother superior and from God as well.”

“By the same token, that young lady placed her baby into OUR care,” Ben continued to press his case. “The members of my family and I see that baby boy as a trust also. A trust given to us by his mother and by the God who watches over all of us, too. The best way for my sons, my daughter, and I to honor that trust is to do what we can to help that baby AND his mother.”

Sister Anne silently mulled over Ben’s words for a moment, then sighed. “All right, Mister Cartwright,” she said, as she reluctantly stepped aside, “you and your daughter may see the girl.”

“Sister Anne and I will be right here if you should have need of us,” Mother Catherine said, her glance taking in father and daughter as she spoke.

Stacy entered the room a few steps ahead of her father. As she approached the bed, Stacy saw the patient as she was a little more than five years ago, with a big, thick mane of chestnut brown hair, matted from having gone many days without benefit of brush or comb, framing a thin, pale face, with delicate elfin features and sharp chin. Stacy was eleven years old at the time, and Cara, twelve.

“Cara?” Stacy said the girl’s name very softly, as she placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

The girl gasped upon hearing her name spoken. She turned from the wall, and she gazed up at Stacy through round, terror filled eyes.

“It’s all right,” Stacy said quietly. She was dismayed to find the girl’s entire body trembling. “Cara, I’m Stacy Cartwright. You may not remember me very well, since you and your pa left Virginia City not long after I came . . . . ”

“Stacy.” Cara exhaled a soft sigh of relief, then closed her eyes. “Yes. I DO remember you,” she said sadly, “I . . . I remember you very well.”

“R-Really?” Stacy queried, taken aback by this revelation.

“I remember the very first day Mister Cartwright brought you to school as if . . . as if it were yesterday,” Cara said wistfully. “I remember because M-Mister Cartwright looked at YOU that day the same way . . . the s-same way Mama used to look at ME before . . . before she--- ” Cara abruptly broke off, unable to continue.

Stacy sat down carefully on the edge of the bed and took Cara into her arms and held her just as Pa did whenever she was troubled, upset, or frightened. Cara tensed for a moment, then with a very soft sigh allowed her head to drop down onto Stacy’s shoulder.

“Every night . . . until Grandma came . . . I’d go to bed, wishing on the first star I saw that I’d wake up the next morning . . . and I’d be YOU,” Cara confessed. “Seems kinda silly now, I s’pose . . . . ”

“You . . . really . . . wanted to . . . to be ME?” Stacy ventured, shocked by Cara’s revelation. “Why?”

“You were loved,” Cara said simply. “Stacy?”

“Y-Yes, Cara?”

“You . . . you never knew my mama . . . did you?” Cara asked, as tears began to well up in her eyes.

Stacy shook her head. “She died before Pa, Hoss, and Joe brought me home from Fort Charlotte,” she replied.

“Things were so different when . . . when M-Mama . . . when SHE was alive,” Cara said, her voice tremulous. “She . . . oh, Stacy, she was beautiful . . . so beautiful . . . and Papa loved her very much. They were happy together.” A wistful smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, as tears began to slip down over her eyelids and flow down her cheeks. “Papa used to smile all the time. H-He . . . he had such a nice smile . . . and every morning? I’d hear him sing while he . . . while he washed and shaved. After M-Mama died . . . Papa . . . P-Papa stopped singing, and . . . and I never saw him smile again either. Not like the way he . . . the way he d-did before Mama--- ”

“I’m sorry, Cara,” Stacy whispered, wincing against the sting of newly formed tears filling her own eyes. “I’m so sorry . . . . ”

“Sometimes . . . s-sometimes I wish that I h-had been the one who died that day,” Cara continued, sobbing piteously. “I . . . I know PAPA would’ve been happier if . . . if h-he’d had MAMA, instead of . . . of me, and they c-could’ve always h-had another little girl, or . . . or m-maybe the BOY Papa always w-wanted . . . . ”

“Cara, no!” Stacy protested, all of a sudden feeling as if she had just been dumped into the deepest part of Lake Tahoe, with a huge millstone tied to her feet.

“It was MY fault you know . . . . ”

“What was your fault?”

“My mama dying the way she did. It w-was . . . it was all . . . MY fault. I . . . I . . . oh, Stacy,” she sobbed, “I killed her! M-My own mama . . . and I KILLED her!”

“Cara . . . . ”

Upon hearing her father’s quiet voice issuing from the other side of the bed, Stacy slowly exhaled a sigh of deep, profound relief.

“Cara, please? I want you to look at me,” Ben continued, laboring mightily to speak calmly in the face of the fury now swiftly rising within him . . . not toward the sad, wounded child-woman his daughter still held clasped within her arms, but toward the father who, in his own mind, had never bothered to set the girl straight with regard to the circumstances surrounding her mother’s tragic, untimely death.

Cara swallowed nervously, then clutching Stacy’s hand tight in both of her own, forced herself to turn and meet Ben Cartwright’s eyes. Where she expected to see censure, disdain, and condemnation, she saw, much to her astonishment, kindness and compassion.

“ . . . I want you to listen very closely to what I have to say,” Ben continued, as he pulled up a chair alongside Cara’s hospital bed. “I was in Virginia City that day . . . . ”

 

 _. . . the sound of a child’s carefree laughter and the rhythmic beating of the patent leather soles of her high buttoned shoes echoed once again in his ears, invoking images one after the other after the other . . . ._

 _. . . a young girl running up the board walk, fast as her legs could carry her, with her mother, growing more annoyed and exasperated with each passing moment, trailing behind, walking as briskly as decorum allowed . . . ._

 _“PAPA! LOOK, MAMA . . . IT’S PAPA! HI, PAPA!”_

 _“Hellfire ‘n damnation!” Roy Coffee groused. There was a note of urgency mixed with his rising ire. “If I told them Bonner boys once, I musta told ‘em a thousand times . . . . ”_

 _. . . directly across the street, just outside the law office of Ben’s attorney, Lucas Milburn, a young man waved, just as Jeff and Rick Bonner [3] came roaring around the corner on their horses, racing a loaded buckboard, driven by their neighbor, Mort McConnell._

 _“That tears it! THIS time, I’m gonna throw their sorry asses in jail for the next thirty---!!” Roy’s words ended in a horrified gasp, when the running, laughing child, suddenly turned and darted out into the street right into the path of the Bonners’ horses and Mort McConnell’s buckboard._

 _“CARA!” The child’s mother cried out in horror. She lifted her skirts and without hesitation, ran after her exuberant young daughter, who still seemed blissfully ignorant of the imminent danger bearing down upon her._

 _More images . . . ._

 _. . . Mort McConnell, his face white as a sheet, eyes round with horror, jaw set with fierce, grim determination, trying his hardest to bring the team drawing his buckboard to a stop . . . ._

 _. . . Jeff Bonner’s horse rearing, toppling its rider to the dusty street, then plunging on, resuming its path toward the girl . . . ._

 _. . . a mother pushing her child with all her might, with all the physical strength she could summon, the force of her own momentum toppling her down on her hands and knees before a street filled with onlookers, all of them paralyzed . . . ._

 _. . . a child half running, half flying, screaming with a mixture of outrage and astonishment, landing in an ungainly heap on the other side of the street, well out of harm’s way . . . ._

 _. . . Mort’s horses, frightened and startled by the child’s scream, suddenly bolting, moving now at a fast gallop, as Mort labored valiantly in vain to bring the animals under control . . . ._

 _. . . a mother rising to her feet, amid a huge collective sigh of relief, then tripping on the hem of her long skirt before she had gone a half dozen steps._

 _A thick cloud of dust rose from the street, stirred up by the horses, obscuring the mother as she once again pitched forward. When the dust finally cleared . . . ._

 

“ . . . I saw what happened,” Ben said, his own face a few shades paler than was the norm. He clasped his hands tightly in his lap to hide their trembling. “It was an accident, Cara,” he implored, “an ACCIDENT. What happened that day WASN’T your fault.”

Cara stared up into Ben’s face for a moment through eyes round with astonishment and shocked horror. Then, she began to wag her head slowly back and forth. “Nuh-nuh . . . n-no . . . n-no one’s ever t-told me that . . . ever . . . . ” she murmured softly, “n-no one.” With a strangled gasp, she buried her face in her hands and wept bitterly.

A long string of colorful invectives passed through Sister Anne’s mind, words she had often heard her own mother use as a matter of course, though she refrained from giving them utterance. “I was AFRAID of this,” she muttered, as she moved toward the open door to Cara Lindsay’s hospital room, with every intention of removing the Cartwrights, even if she ended up having to bodily eject father and daughter personally.

“Wait, Sister Anne,” Mother Gibson said very quietly, “please.”

“Yes, Mother,” she growled through clenched teeth, knowing full well the mother superior’s words, when spoken in that tone of voice, at that precise decibel, amounted to a strict order to be obeyed immediately, without explanation, discussion, or argument.

Ben, meanwhile, took Cara into his arms and held her as she wept. Stacy, with tears streaming down her own cheeks reached out and gently placed her hands on the older girl’s shoulders.

“I . . . I WANT t-to . . . to believe you,” Cara sobbed, “I . . . I want more than . . . than j-just about ANYTHING to believe you . . . . ”

“You CAN believe me, Cara, because I w-was there,” Ben reiterated, his voice shaking as much from anger as empathy with the troubled, grieving young woman he held in his arms. “I saw everything. Yes, your mother saved your life . . . and lost her own doing it . . . but YOU didn’t kill her . . . anymore than my son, Adam, killed HIS mother because she died bringing him into this world. What happened that day was an accident.”

“Y-You . . . you don’t hate Adam because . . . . ”

The eagerness and intense yearning Ben saw in her eyes and face broke his heart. “No,” he said gently, “Adam’s all the more precious because he was the very last gift his mother, may God rest her soul, gave me. There’s so much of her in Adam . . . he’s got his mother’s eyes . . . her smile . . . that dimple in his right cheek when he smiles . . . her love of books and learning . . . her wry sense of humor . . . . ”

“N-No one’s ever said this to me before,” Cara murmured, awestruck, her voice barely audible.

“Cara?”

She lifted her head from Ben’s chest, and turned toward Stacy.

“My mother also died saving my life,” Stacy said. “Somewhere in Pa’s Sacred Book it says the greatest act of love is when someone gives up their own life for someone ELSE. Our mothers . . . yours and mine . . . must have loved us very much.”

“R-Really?”

Stacy nodded.

“I . . . remember Mama being . . . well, kinda mad at me that day,” Cara said sadly.

“Sometimes mothers and fathers DO get angry and exasperated with their children,” Ben quietly explained. “I know I have . . . with all four of ‘em at one time or another. But I’ve NEVER stopped loving them, and I KNOW your mother never stopped loving YOU.”

Cara knew he meant every word by the earnestness she saw shining with an almost blinding intensity in those dark brown eyes. “No one’s ever said that to me . . . . ” she murmured softly, speaking more to herself than to either of her visitors, while shaking her head in bewildered wonderment of it all, “ . . . not since that day . . . . ” Fresh tears began to slip down over her eyelids and fall down her cheeks.

“Cara,” Stacy said, as she took hold of the older girl’s hand, “Pa and I want you to know Little One’s safe and doing very well.”

“Thank you,” Cara murmured, looking away, her cheeks flushed scarlet, “I . . . oh, Stacy . . . M-Mister Cartwright, I hope you . . . that you don’t think me bad f-for . . . . ” Her eyes dropped to her hands resting in her lap.

“No, Cara, none of us . . . Stacy, her brothers, Hop Sing, or me . . . haven’t for one minute thought of you as being bad or having done something bad,” Ben hastened to reassure the distraught girl. “When I look at you, I see a mother who loves her baby so much, she was willing to give him up to someone she knows is able to give him all of the things she feels she can’t.”

“I g-gave him life . . . I b-brought him into this w-world,” Cara sobbed softly, “but I . . . I can’t give him anything ELSE . . . except love. I . . . I c-couldn’t even give him a proper name.”

“Cara . . . if you’ll let us . . . we want to help you,” Stacy said, “BOTH of you! When you’re better, you can come back with Pa and me to the Ponderosa--- ”

“No!” Cara whimpered, as the blood drained right out of her face. “Dear God, no! I wish I could . . . with all m-my heart I wish I COULD, but I CAN’T. After I’m better, I have go away . . . FAR away. My baby’s life DEPENDS on it!”

“It’ll be all right,” Stacy insisted. “If you’re in danger, my pa, my brothers, and I can and will protect you and the baby.”

“I can’t, Stacy, I can’t! If . . . if HE finds us together--- ”

“If . . . WHO finds you together?” Ben asked. “Cara, are you speaking about the father of your baby?”

“No, Gabe---!!! He’d never---! It’s MY father, Mister Cartwright!” she replied, her entire body trembling with fear. “If he finds me, he’ll take my little one away from me and . . . and SELL him like . . . like YOU might sell a horse at an auction!” She buried her face in her hands once again and wept.

“THAT DOES IT!” Sister Anne roared. She charged into the room like a troop of cavalry men before Mother Catherine could even think of stopping her. “OUT!” She took hold of Stacy by the forearm and yanked the girl off the bed, eliciting a cry of pain and outrage. “YOU, TOO, MISTER CARTWRIGHT! GET OUT! NOW!”

Stacy angrily wrenched her arm free and stood, with hands clenched into a pair of rock hard fists, ready to stand her ground.

“Stacy . . . easy!” Ben ordered in a very quiet, yet very firm tone of voice.

Stacy very slowly, one finger at a time, relaxed her hands. “Cara, we’ll come back again,” she said, casting a defiant glare in Sister Anne’s direction.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Sister Anne angrily vowed.

 

 

End of Part 1.

 

***

 

1\. This happened in my story “The Guardian.”

2\. Joe’s friend, Mitch Devlin, first appeared in Bonanza Episode #177, “Between Heaven And Earth,” written by Ed Adamson.

3\. Jeff and Rick Bonner appear in Bonanza Episode #166, “The Pressure Game,” written by Don Tait.


	2. Chapter 2

PART 2

 

“Mother Gibson, I honestly don’t know WHAT to say,” Ben said, nonplussed, as he, Stacy, and the mother superior entered her office together. “It certainly WASN’T our intention to upset her as we did . . . . ”

“Mister Cartwright . . . Stacy . . . first of all, I think you both need to understand that Sister Anne comes from a very troubled background,” Mother Catherine said quietly as she pulled out the chair from under her desk. She also invited the Cartwrights to sit with a gesture. “I can’t go into specific detail, nor WOULD I if I were allowed. I feel I owe it to both of you to tell you that much so that you can perhaps try and understand . . . at least a little . . . where she’s coming from.”

Mother Catherine dropped heavily into her chair and began to slowly massage the bridge of her nose. “She’s . . . . ” The mother superior fell silent for a moment, searching for the right word. “Protective,” she murmured a moment later. “Sister Anne is protective of the patients entrusted to her care . . . fiercely so . . . especially for mothers and their newborns.”

“I see,” Ben said slowly, thoughtfully. “Sister Anne must feel especially protective of Miss Lindsay, knowing full well the abuse that poor young woman has suffered.”

“ . . . AND given what’s generally known about the girl’s father.”

Ben frowned. “I’m not quite sure what you mean, Mother Gibson.”

“Mister Cartwright, I rarely venture into town,” Mother Catherine continued. “But in the weeks and months following the death of that poor child’s mother, I heard from parishioners and from their children very disturbing things about Mister Lindsay and his daughter. I discounted most of what was said in the beginning because I knew I was hearing things second . . . probably third and fourth hand. But, as time passed, the stories not only continued, but had a certain continuity about them that I couldn’t entirely dismiss.”

“Mother Gibson?”

“Yes, Stacy?”

“I . . . don’t mean to be disrespectful or anything like that, but . . . if you and other people knew the terrible stories about Cara and her father were true, how come no one stepped in to help them . . . or at least help HER?” Stacy asked.

“I heard that people offered . . . your father and brothers among them,” the mother superior replied, taking no offense at the question Stacy had asked. “He . . . Cara’s father . . . refused any and all offers to help.” She sighed. “Back then, I could say that I knew Mister Lindsay if I saw him, but that’s about it. I . . . understand he had a great deal of pride about him . . . . ”

“Yes, he did,” Ben confirmed with a curt nod of his head.

“Pa?”

“Yes, Stacy?”

“Did Mister Lindsay have the same kind of pride my mother, Miss Paris, had?”

Ben very reluctantly nodded his head.

“Why didn’t anyone try to help Cara?” Stacy asked.

“Because Cara was, and still is under the age of majority,” Ben patiently explained. “That means her father, for good or ill, has custody over her. Though a lot of us WANTED very much to do something to help Cara, without her father’s permission, our hands were tied by law.”

“ . . . and THAT, Mister Cartwright, now puts your family and my order between a proverbial rock and a hard place,” the mother superior said grimly.

“What do you mean?” Stacy demanded, all of a sudden feeling very much afraid.

“Because Cara Lindsay is still a minor, your father and I both are required by law to notify her father as to HER whereabouts and . . . the whereabouts of her baby,” Mother Catherine ruefully explained.

“No!” Stacy cried out. “Pa . . . Mother Gibson, you can’t!”

“Stacy, please believe me . . . sending that poor child and her baby back to her father is the very last thing in the world I want to do,” Mother Catherine declared. “This business of him wanting to sell her baby . . . . ” She shook her head in grim wonder and bewilderment, then sighed. “There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Miss Lindsay believes it to be true, but I . . . to be frank, I just plain and simply can’t even begin to fathom such a thing. However, I DID see the scars on her back.”

“If her father’s the one who put them there, couldn’t Cara press assault and battery charges against him?” Stacy ventured.

Ben sadly shook his head. “No, Stacy . . . I’m afraid she can’t.”

“Why not?!” Stacy demanded, appalled and outraged.

“As Cara’s custodial parent, Mister Lindsay’s required by law to provide for his daughter as best he’s able, until she reaches the age of majority,” Ben replied. “Part of that provision includes meting out discipline.”

“Unfortunately the letter of the law makes little or no distinction between what defines discipline and what defines cruelty,” Mother Catherine added with a dark, angry scowl.

“You two mean to tell me that the law can’t protect Cara?!” Stacy asked.

“No,” Ben replied, with a heavy heart. “The law can’t protect her from a cruel, abusive father until she reaches the age of majority.”

“ . . . AND, according to the letter of the law, Miss Lindsay’s father has legal custody over her baby as well,” Mother Catherine added.

“Oh no!” Stacy groaned. “Pa . . . that’s not FAIR!”

“No, Young Woman . . . it’s NOT fair,” Ben heartily agreed. “Mother Gibson?”

“Yes, Mister Cartwright?”

“A favor?”

“If I can . . . . ” Mother Catherine replied, as she mentally braced herself.

“It’s true that the letter of the law obligates us to inform Mister Lindsay as to the whereabouts of his daughter and infant grandson,” Ben said, “but are YOU aware of any law or provision that says anything . . . anything at all . . . about WHEN you and I hafta let Mister Lindsay know where his daughter and grandson are?”

“To be up front and honest, Mister Cartwright, I . . . don’t know,” the mother superior replied. “I don’t think it would be wise to stretch things out indefinitely, however . . . . ”

“I have no intention of stretching things out for an indefinite length of time,” Ben hastened to assure the mother superior. “Two weeks, Mother Gibson. Just give me two weeks to find out whether or not there’s substance to Miss Lindsay’s allegations, and find proof that will stand up in court if there IS.”

Mother Catherine mulled the matter over silently for a moment, then slowly nodded her head. “All right, Mister Cartwright. You have two weeks. If Sister Anne or any of the others responsible for Miss Lindsay’s care are able to get any more information from her, I’ll see that it’s passed on to you.”

“Thank you, Mother Gibson,” Ben said as he and Stacy rose.

“I won’t ask what you intend to do. To be honest, I’m half way AFRAID to ask,” Mother Catherine said with a touch of wryness, “but I’ll keep you in my prayers as you do . . . whatever it is you’re planning.”

“Thank you, Mother Gibson. I would appreciate that very much.”

 

“Pa?” Stacy queried, as she and Ben climbed into their buggy.

“Yes, Stacy?”

“Do you have some kinda plan in mind to find out whether or not everything Cara said about her pa really IS true?” Stacy asked.

“Umm hmmm,” Ben replied.

“Can you tell ME?”

“I think I can count on you to be discreet, Young Woman,” Ben replied. “First thing I’m going to do is head straight for the Western Union office and send a wire to your brother, Adam.”

“How can Adam help us, Pa?”

“I hope Adam can tell us how to get in touch with a real good friend of his, who just so happens to be a Pinkerton man.”

“Really?”

“Um hmmm.”

“He any good?”

“One of the best, or so Adam tells me,” Ben replied . . . .

 

“Mister. Cartwright.”

Adam set his pencil aside and looked up from the drawings of a house he was designing for a client who would soon be settling in the Sacramento area. Ebenezer McCrumby, secretary and bookkeeper for the architectural firm of Cartwright and Ames, stood just outside the door of his private office.

“Yes, Mister McCrumby?” Adam queried. “What can I do for you?”

Ebenezer pulled himself stiffly erect. He was a thin, wiry man, standing all of five feet five and seven eighths inches. He was neatly attired in what Adam’s partner, Eli Ames, referred to as his uniform of choice: a black suit, with pants, almost painfully creased, jacket, and vest, white shirt, black string tie, and shoes, polished to a high glossy shine. No matter what the weather, he never removed his jacket, unbuttoned his vest, loosened his tie, or, heaven forbid, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.

“Mister Cartwright, there’s a man without,” Ebenezer reported in a tone of voice a child’s nanny might use to scold her charge of wrong doing. “He CLAIMS he’s a friend of yours, but doesn’t have an appointment--- ”

“Hey! Adam Cartwright, y’ old sea dog! Long time no see!” a man roughly the same age as Adam pushed his way past the flummoxed and thoroughly annoyed secretary and sauntered into Adam’s office.

“Well, I’ll be . . . Jack Cranston, you sly ol’ son uva sea cook!” Adam rose and greeted the man with a broad grin. “Mister McCrumby, it’s quite all right. Mister Cranston IS an old friend of mine.”

“If YOU say so, Sir,” Ebenezer sniffed with haughty disdain, as his eyes slowly, reluctantly took in the big man, standing nearly a whole head taller than his employer, with huge barrel chest, a thick, unruly mop of dark brown hair and full beard, both liberally mixed with strands of silver.

“Can I get you anything?” Adam offered. “A cup of coffee, perhaps?”

“No, thank you, Adam,” Jack replied.

“In that case, you may go back to your own work, Mister McCrumby,” Adam politely dismissed his secretary.

Ebenezer immediately turned heel and left the room, moving as fast as propriety and decorum allowed.

“So. What brings you to Sacramento, Jack?” Adam asked, as he gestured for the man to sit down. “Business . . . pleasure . . . or both?”

“Business, Adam,” Jack said as he pulled up a chair alongside Adam’s drawing table. “My firm’s been hired by a couple out in San Francisco to investigate an attorney living in Carson City,” he explained. “I’VE drawn the assignment.”

“ . . . and what does a Carson City lawyer have to do with ME?” Adam queried, as he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“The lawyer’s name is Lindsay. Tobias Lindsay,” Jack explained. “You know him?”

“Yes, in that Tobias and I went to school together and you could say I had a nodding acquaintance with the man until I left Virginia City and the Ponderosa,” Adam replied, “but I can’t say he and I were ever friends.”

“Even though you went to school together?” Jack pressed.

“Tobias was two, almost three years older than me,” Adam explained. “That small number wouldn’t make much difference now, I suppose, but when we were both school boys, it was a deep abyss almost impossible to cross. Furthermore, the lives we led at the time, he living in town with his family and me on the Ponderosa, couldn’t have been more different. Jack . . . . ”

“Yes, Adam?”

“Can you tell me what this is about?”

“I can’t give you my clients’ names, of course, but the reason they’ve hired the Pinkerton Agency, and by extension me, to investigate Mister Lindsay is three years ago, they purchased goods from Mister Lindsay that they believed to be of the highest quality,” Jack replied. “THEIR words, Adam, not mine. What they actually received was . . . well, let’s just say what they got was ‘way less than perfect.”

Adam heard the wry, sarcastic note in Jack’s voice loud and clear. “What kind of goods did Tobias sell the couple who’ve hired you?” he asked.

“Mister Lindsay’s a baby broker, Adam . . . . ”

“ . . . a . . . what?”

“A baby broker. A lawyer who buys babies and sells them to wealthy families,” Jack explained, “same as black men and women were bought and sold as slaves not so terribly long ago.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be.”

Adam frowned. He wasn‘t sure which he found most disturbing: the charge itself or rock firm conviction he heard in the voice of one John Oglethorpe Cranston when he’d leveled so heinous an accusation against an acquaintance from his distant past. “That’s a pretty serious charge,” he said quietly. “You have any kind of proof to back that up?”

Jack ruefully shook his head. “None that would hold up in court, I‘m afraid.”

“Then what makes you so sure--- ”

“ . . . that Tobias Lindsay’s in the business of what amounts to peddling flesh?” Jack queried.

Adam nodded.

“At this point, all I have to go on is a real strong gut instinct,” Jack said grimly. “As I just said, that won’t stand up as evidence in a court of law, but it’s never let me down, Adam. Never!”

“How hard can it be to find proof that’ll hold up in court?” Adam asked.

“Very,” Jack replied. “There’s a very fine line between a legitimate private adoption handled by a lawyer and what amounts to selling babies.”

“Are the babies in question orphans?”

“Adam, you ever heard about a case in Baltimore involving a nun, whose vocation name was Sister Augustine?”

“I can’t say that I have,” Adam replied.

“This happened . . . I think it would’ve been around the time you were getting yourself ready to go east to Harvard,” Jack replied, then grinned. “I would’ve just finished my first year at Yale.”

“So . . . what about this Sister Augustine?” Adam asked.

“At the time she was a novice with a nursing order based in Baltimore called the Little Sisters of Mercy and Compassion,” Jack began.

“Same order that runs Saint Mary’s Hospital in Virginia City,” Adam said.

Jack nodded. “The very same. To make a very long, very sordid story short, Sister Augustine along with Sister Catherine, another novice, and a gorgon of a woman, by all accounts, whose vocation name was ironically Sister Mercy, headed up an institution called Our Lady of Charity Maternity Hospital.”

“Am I correct in assuming that the patients who entered this hospital were unmarried girls who found themselves in the family way?” Adam asked.

“Not entirely,” Jack replied. “It’s intention was to provide a place where poor women, married or not, could go to get proper care during the time they were with child and when the time came for them to give birth. They would also give families, who wished it, assistance in putting their babies up for adoption.”

Adam’s thoughts drifted back to the terrible dark days immediately following Marie’s death and burial, and the cruel pressure “well meaning” friends and neighbors at that time brought to bear on his stricken, grieving father to allow them to adopt his youngest brother, Joe.

 

 _“He’s young,” they insisted, particularly the wives. “He needs a MOTHER’S love . . . . ”_

 

“You’re . . . thinking about that time, aren’t you.” Though posed as a question, Jack’s words were a statement of fact. “I know by that look on your face.”

“Pa almost relented,” Adam said in a tight, angry voice.

“Almost is as good as a mile in my book, Adam,” Jack quietly pointed out. “Thank God he didn’t for Joe’s sake.”

“Amen to that,” Adam replied, his voiced barely audible. “Pa’s proved himself over the years to be not only a good father, but a good mother as well. Joe thrived growing up on the Ponderosa with Pa, Hoss, and me . . . and in MY opinion, he’s turned out a far better man than he would have had he been raised by any one of those people who were so bound and determined to take him off Pa’s hands.”

“Very few men, my own father among them, have the kind of strength your father does,” Jack said. “For many facing calamity . . . death of the mother in childbirth, perhaps, and the burden of yet another mouth to feed . . . couple that family and friends pressuring them same as they did your father, it’s a lot easier to give in and tell yourself later that it was best for the child.”

“You seem to speak as a man who knows,” Adam observed with a puzzled frown.

“Because I AM a man who knows,” Jack candidly admitted. “I was young, barely eighteen years one, and my wife had just died giving birth to our son. She had no family to speak of . . . my father, may God rest his soul, was sick and dying at the time. As for my mother . . . all of HER energy was spent in caring for my father. My older brother wanted to take him and raise him, but his wife was adamantly against it. With no money and few prospects, I . . . well, at the time I felt I had no choice.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I had no idea,” Adam said quietly.

“It was a long time ago,” Jack said, suddenly brusque, “and though I don’t know who adopted my son, I’ve heard from sources I trust that the couple who took him in were very good, kind, and loving people.”

“Thank the good Lord for that,” Adam murmured with heartfelt gratitude.

“At any rate, getting back to Sister Augustine and the Our Lady of Charity Maternity Hospital,” Jack continued, “a complaints were made against them by several women who claimed they had signed papers consenting to allow their infants to go up for adoption while still woozy from sedatives given during or right after childbirth.”

“Did anything come of those complaints?” Adam asked.

“Yes, miracle of miracles,” Jack replied. “Thanks to testimony given by Sister Catherine--- ”

“She was the other novice nun working with Sisters Augustine and Mercy?”

“Yes. Thanks to her testimony, the prosecuting attorney and the police found evidence supporting not only the cruelty alleged by Sister Catherine, but of coercing mothers to give up their children for adoption, and kidnapping local children as well,” Jack said. “The hospital was forced to shut down, Sisters Mercy and Augustine were sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and I believed they were excommunicated from the church as well. Sister Mercy died in prison not long after. Sister Augustine escaped from prison a couple of years after she was incarcerated. She’s not been heard from since.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask this, but . . . what, exactly, happened to your clients’ baby?”

“She died of syphilis less than a year after they ‘adopted‘ her.”

Adam let out a long, slow whistle. “Tobias sold your clients a baby born to, well, to put this politely, a woman who makes her living selling her charms?”

“It would appear so.”

“Isn’t that risky?”

“Absolutely, for obvious reasons.”

“Jack . . . . ”

“Yes, Adam?”

“I received a wire from my father earlier this afternoon that I think may interest you . . . . ” Adam removed the envelope from his drawing table and handed it to Jack.

The message read:

 

“Benjamin Cartwright  
Virginia City, Nevada

Adam Cartwright  
Sacramento, California

Adam,

Can you tell me how to get in touch with Jack Cranston. Matter urgent. Need to make inquiries about Tobias Lindsay.

Pa.”

 

“I’d say this is one hell of an interesting coincidence . . . IF I were a believer in coincidence,” Jack said as he refolded the slip of paper and placed it back into the envelope. “Adam . . . . ”

“Yes, Jack?”

“Do YOU have any idea as to why your father wants me to investigate this Tobias Lindsay?”

“ ‘Fraid not, Jack,” Adam replied.

“I . . . can’t give your father my clients‘ names,” Jack said slowly, “but since he’s ALSO interested in this Tobias Lindsay, I see no reason why I can’t share with him the same information I share with them, as long as their anonymity isn’t compromised.”

“Thank you. My father, I’m sure, will appreciate that very much.”

Jack rose from his seat and stretched. “If you’d tell me how to get to the telegraph office, I’ll send your father a wire, letting him know I’m willing and able to take the case. After I take care of THAT little chore, you, uhhh . . . mind if I invite myself to your home for dinner?” The ingratiating smile and great big sad puppy dog eyes immediately put Adam in mind of his youngest brother, Joe.

Adam chuckled softly for a moment, then turned serious. “You’re certainly more than welcome to come for dinner, Jack . . . IF you can stomach MY cooking and you feel up to fielding questions from a couple of inquisitive kids,” he said. “Mrs. Cortez left this morning for Placerville to care for an aunt who fell ill suddenly and my wife will be staying the night with her brother and sister-in-law.”

“Oh?”

“Teresa’s sister-in-law had a baby a couple of days ago . . . stillborn.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Adam,” Jack said somberly. “If my coming for supper’s going to be too much of an imposition--- ”

“Not at all,” Adam hastened to reassure.

Jack grinned. “Well THAT being the case, YOUR cooking sure can’t be any worse than the swill that swabbie used to serve up when we were mates aboard the ol’ Maggie Mae Brunner back in our seafaring days,” he chuckled. “Lead on, MacDuff . . . . ”

 

Irma Fielding barely heard the grandfather’s clock downstairs in the great room strike the hour of three o’clock . . . in the morning. She had spent what seemed like the last eternity and a half, walking up and down, back and forth, from one end of her room to the other . . . .

 _“ . . . ad nauseum,”_ she silently, wryly mused . . . .

. . . with her baby daughter, Cicely Amelia, Cissy for short, cradled in her arms, her face beet red from screaming. _“Please, Lord . . . please, please, please, please . . . .”_ she silently, desperately prayed, _“ . . . ooohhh please! Grant the members of the Cartwright Family the blessed miracle of sleep in the midst of all this terrible racket at this unholy hour of the morning . . . . ”_

Irma Fielding’s heart and spirits sank when she heard the soft, yet insistent knocking on the fast closed door of her room. She swallowed nervously, then with fatalistic aplomb, walked over and opened the door.

The Cartwright clan patriarch stood just on the other side of the threshold, clad in robe, nightshirt, and slippers, staring at her through eyes half closed.

“M-Mister Cartwright! I . . . oh dear, I’m so sorry . . . so very sorry,” Irma immediately stammered out an apology.

“ . . . ‘s aw’ride,” Ben half yawned, half groaned, “ . . . bou’ duh colic?”

“No, Mister Cartwright, it’s NOT colic. She’s teething,” Irma replied with helpless resignation, raising her voice in order to be heard above the wailing of the baby lying in her arms.

“She . . . whad ya say?” Ben asked, wincing against Cissy’s agonized cries, now rising steadily in volume.

“She’s TEETHING, Mister Cartwright,” Irma repeated. Two irregular spots of scarlet blossomed upon her pale cheeks and began to spread. “I’m sorry she woke you . . . . ”

“Tee’din’??!” Ben queried.

“Yes. Teething.”

“Y’ wan’ me t’ ask Hop Sing t’---??!”

“Oh no, no, no please, Mister Cartwright! DON’T wake up Hop Sing!” Irma begged. “She’ll quiet soon . . . . ”

Eventually.

How eventually, she had no idea.

“Y’ sure y’ don’ wan’ me t’---??”

“No, Mister Cartwright, please don’t trouble Hop Sing. I’ll have Cissy quiet soon . . . very soon . . . . ”

“Y’ need anything . . . lemme know,” Ben said, punctuating his words with a big yawn. “ . . . uhhh . . . s’cuse me . . . I . . . gonna g’won downstairs. G’ nide, Miz Fieldin’ . . . . ”

“ . . . sorry,” Irma meekly called after him, as he turned and started toward the stairs.

 

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, Ben was surprised to find his three younger children and Hop Sing clustered together by the fireplace.

“Oh, uhhh . . . Pa!” Joe half snorted, half yawned upon catching sight of his father. He sat on the coffee table, cradling the baby boy the family had come to affectionately refer to as Li’l One or Li’l Fella in his arms, clad in a pair of red and white striped pajama bottoms, robe securely belted and a pair of slippers. He immediately straightened his posture and yawned again. “G’ mornin’, Pa . . . . ” he groaned softly, grimacing as if in agony.

The sharp, piercing whistle of a tea kettle on the stove out in the kitchen quickly roused a dozing Hop Sing from his lethargy. He scrambled from his place on the settee to his feet, nearly losing his balance. “Go now . . . in kitchen . . . Hop Sing make tea for crying baby . . . not care if baby mama like it or not,” he muttered under his breath, as he stumbled out from around the settee.

“ . . . and how long ‘ve the lotta been down here?” Ben demanded as he collapsed heavily into the big red chair.

“Ah dunno, Pa,” Hoss groaned. He half sat, half slouched in the blue chair, clad in his green and white gingham nightshirt and a pair of slippers, with head resting against the back of the chair, and eyes closed. “Feels like all night.”

Hop Sing passed through a few moments later, muttering a long string of unintelligible words under his breath, with a teaspoon in one hand and a mug of . . . something . . . in the other.

“How’s OUR Li’l Fella doin’, Gran’pa?” Stacy asked with a big yawn. She sat curled up on the settee, wearing a warm pair of pajamas and robe, with her feet tucked up under her.

“I dunno HOW, but he’s fas’ asleep,” Joe murmured softly, his face and manner softening as he gazed down into the face of the sleeping infant he held in his arms. “Say, uhhh . . . Pa?”

“ . . . unnngh?” Ben grunted.

“How long izzat kid upstairs gonna be cuttin’ teeth?” Joe asked, as he turned and gazed at the steps and the environs above with an annoyed frown.

“I don’ remember,” Ben groaned.

“Y’ really don’ remember . . . or y’ don’ WANNA remember?” Hoss moaned.

“ . . . uh ohhhh,” Stacy gasped. “You guys hear THAT?”

“Hear WHAT, Kiddo?” Joe demanded, tired, sleepy, and irritable. “I don’ hear a . . . . ” His voice trailed off into the near deafening silence that had all of a sudden descended upon the entire household.

“Wha’ happened?!” Hoss snorted, as he wearily straightened his posture and gazed around the room in complete bewilderment.

A moment later, Hop Sing appeared at the top of the stairs with a smug, triumphant grin on his face, humming softly.

“Hey, Hop Sing,” Hoss quietly called out to the Chinese man as he passed by, “you have anything t’ do with everything bein’ so quiet all uva sudden?”

“Hop Sing make special tea,” he explained, “Chinese mama give to baby cutting teeth. Help make pain go ‘way, help baby sleep. Help MAMA sleep, too.”

“Thank you, Hop Sing,” Joe said with deep, profound, heartfelt gratitude. “C’mon, Li’l Fella, wha’ say we g’won back t’ bed ‘n salvage wha’ we can uva good night’s sleep?” he cooed to the tiny bundle still sleeping soundly in his arms.

“Stacy?” Ben queried, noting that his daughter hadn’t stirred from her place on the settee. “You coming?”

“In a little while, Pa,” she murmured softly. “I promise.”

“Well, I’d best be goin’ up,” Hoss grunted as he hauled himself out of the blue chair to his feet. “I gotta lot o’ work t’ get done t’morrow, so I’d best get what rest I can. G’ night, Pa . . . Joe . . . Hop Sing . . . ‘n don’t you be stayin’ up too long, Li’l Sister, y’ hear me? You need your rest, too.”

“You listen to what Biggest Brother say, Miss Stacy,” Hop Sing added his own two cents worth. “Almost well, but not all the way well. STILL need plenty lotsa rest.”

“I won’t stay up too long,” Stacy dolefully promised. “G’ night, Hoss . . . Gran’pa . . . ‘n Hop Sing . . . . ”

“You boys g’won up,” Ben exhorted his sons after bidding Hop Sing good night. “I’ll be along in a few minutes.” After the rest of the family had trudged back to their respective beds, Ben sat down on the settee next to his daughter. “Everything all right?”

“I . . . . ” Stacy sighed very softly and shook her head.

“You feel like talking about it?”

“Now?!”

“Now’s as good a time as any,” Ben replied. “I couldn’t help but notice you were awfully quiet on our way home from Saint Mary’s Hospital this afternoon . . . . ”

“It’s Cara, Pa. I’m worried about her,” Stacy freely confessed.

“I really AM very sorry I didn’t talk with ya about the evidence of cruelty Doctor Martin and Mother Gibson found on her back and leg before we went to see her,” Ben said ruefully.

“I was shocked when I heard about it, but . . . that’s not what’s bothering me,” Stacy said.

“What IS bothering you?” Ben prodded gently.

“I keep thinking if I were in Cara’s place . . . having a baby without being married? You might not be real happy about that . . . you might even be mad at first, but you’d still love ME . . . and the baby, too,” Stacy responded, her voice barely audible, “and I know YOU’D be there for us. It can’t be an easy thing for a woman or a girl the same age as Cara and me to go through something like that, but knowing you have someone in your corner, who loves you and cares about you can make a terrible circumstance halfway bearable. Cara doesn’t have anyone in her corner, Pa.”

“From the sound of things, she doesn’t have HER father in her corner,” Ben said sadly, “and I hafta admit that bothers me, too . . . a lot . . . because Cara needs her father, now more than she ever has in her whole life. But, she DOES have someone in her corner . . . at least TWO someones in fact . . . who care very much about her and the Li’l Fella.”

“Who, Pa?” Stacy asked.

“You and me,” Ben replied with a weary smile.

“Yeah . . . . ” Stacy said slowly. “She DOES have the two of us . . . AND she’s got Hoss, Joe, and Hop Sing, too.”

“Indeed she does,” Ben agreed.

“I . . . hope we can stay in their corner, Pa,” Stacy said, remembering the disturbing conversation between her father and the mother superior after their visit with Cara.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make it so, Young Woman,” Ben promised. “In the meantime . . . . ”

A bare hint of a smile tweaked the corner of her mouth. “I know, Pa,” she said with a mock long suffering sigh and a wry roll of her eyes heavenward, “Doctor Martin’s not yet given me an official clean bill of health, and until he does . . . I still need my rest. Right?”

“That’s EXACTLY right,” Ben said firmly.

“I’m STILL not sleepy,” Stacy said as she and her father rose from the settee to their feet. “all right if I read for a little while?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Ben said as they walked across the room toward the stairs. “How about you getting yourself under the covers, laying your head down on the pillow, and just closing your eyes? That’s always worked well for your brothers.”

“Ok, Pa,” she said dubiously, “I’ll give it a try . . . . ”

 

“ ‘Mornin’, Hoss.”

Hoss glanced up sharply, then grinned upon seeing Sheriff Coffee enter the yard on his horse, Tin Star. “G’ morning, Roy,” he affably returned the greeting, as he straightened. “We’re just settin’ down t’ breakfast, if ’n you’re of a mind t’ join us . . . . ”

“I’m afraid this ain’t a social call,” Roy said as he climbed down from his horse’s back. “Your pa around?”

“He’s probably inside at the table,” Hoss replied, while blotting his hands dry against his shirt. “Come on in.”

Roy silently fell in step alongside Hoss.

“Hey . . . Pa?” Hoss called out as he and the sheriff entered through the front door. “Roy Coffee’s here--- ”

“Come on in, Roy,” Ben invited, rising from his place at the head of the table. “Hop Sing---- ”

“What?!” Hop Sing cried, indignant and outraged. “You invite guest come, eat breakfast, and NOT tell Hop Sing?! No good! Hop Sing quit! Go back to--- ”

Roy held up both hands, as if to ward off physical blows. “ ‘S ok, Hop Sing,” he begged. “No need t’ git yourself worked up into a lather . . . I ain’t stayin’.”

“Hmpf! Wha’sa matter? You not like Hop Sing cooking??!” the Chinese member of the Cartwright family sniffed with angry disdain, then turned heel and stomped back toward the kitchen muttering a long string of colorful invectives in his native tongue.

“Sorry, Ben . . . didn’t MEAN t’ set him off . . . . ” Roy immediately apologized.

“It’s all right, Roy,” Ben hastened to reassure. “It’s nothing personal . . . he’s just a mite out of sorts this morning due to lack of sleep.”

Roy grinned. “That baby y’ folks found on your doorstep keepin’ the lotta ya up?” he asked.

“No,” Stacy sighed, trying her best to stifle the yawn that suddenly threatened to manifest. “It’s . . . . ” she cast a quick, furtive glance over her shoulder toward the stairs, then lowered her voice, “it’s Mrs. Fielding’s baby,” she sighed.

“A li’l fussy, eh?” Roy asked.

“Ohhh brother,” Stacy groaned.

“What can I do for ya, Roy?” Ben asked.

“I got a wire from Sheriff Dudley this mornin’ . . . . ”

Hoss frowned. “He the sheriff over in Carson City?”

“Yep.” Roy nodded his head. “Seems a young lady from there’s gone missin’. Ben . . . . ”

“Yes, Roy?” Ben ventured warily.

“The young lady was . . . she was expectin’,” Roy said. “Accordin’ to that wire from Amos . . . Sheriff Dudley . . . she was due t’ give birth any day when she disappeared.”

“Oh?” Ben queried.

“You folks got any idea . . . any idea at all as t’ who left that baby at your back door?” Roy asked.

“You . . . mind if we talk privately?” Ben asked. “Outside?”

“Not at all, Ben.”

“When Hop Sing brings the food to the table, you three dig in,” Ben instructed his three younger offspring. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

 

Ben and Roy walked across the yard to the corral next to the barn and took up position beside the fence.

“This missing young lady Sheriff Dudley wired you about . . . she have a name?” Ben asked, hoping against hope the wire from Carson City was about another young, expectant mother, who had gone missing. He knew deep down that such was highly unlikely, but there was always an outside chance.

Roy’s answer shattered that slim, desperate hope into a thousand million pieces: “Cara Lindsay. I’m sure you remember the Lindsays, Ben . . . Tobias . . . Ellenora . . . ‘n Cara?”

“I do,” Ben replied with sinking heart.

Roy silently studied his old friend for a moment. “You SURE you ain’t got any idea as t’ who that baby belongs to?!” he finally ventured.

“Someone HAS been sleeping in our barn last few nights,” Ben hedged. “It’s possible whoever it was MIGHT have left the baby at our back door, but . . . . ” he shrugged, “I can’t tell ya that for absolute certain. I never even saw who our mystery guest was.”

“Any possibility someone else did?” Roy asked, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Your sons, daughter, or Hop Sing, p’rhaps? One of the men who works for ya?”

“Anything’s possible, of course,” Ben reluctantly allowed, “but if they had, they would have told me.”

“ . . . ‘n you never saw fit t’ report it.” The sheriff’s words sounded more like an accusation than an inquiry.

“Roy, no one was hurt or threatened in any way . . . nothing was stolen or vandalized . . . I just figured it was some poor fella, down on his luck, looking for a place to get in out of the cold,” Ben explained. “I freely admit that given my druthers, I’d rather our star boarder had come to me first before taking up residence in one of our empty horse stalls. I would have offered him food at the very least, and work, if he was of a mind.”

“But seein’ as t’ how no laws were broken, except maybe for trespassin’ . . . ‘n there’s no law against a man bein’ down on his luck, you didn’t see fit t’ report it,” Roy said curtly, growing more certain with each passing minute that Ben Cartwright knew more than he was telling. A LOT more.

“That’s about the size of it,” Ben replied.

“Ben,” Roy suddenly decided upon the direct approach, “you ain’t harborin’ Cara Lindsay HERE, at the Ponderosa, ‘are ya? ‘Cause if you are--- ”

“I’m NOT,” Ben said curtly.

“You’d better NOT be,” Roy warned. “You’d be in a whole world o’ trouble if y’ ARE, what with her bein’ underage ‘n all. At the least, Ben . . . at the very least, you’d be lookin’ at a kidnappin’ charge. If you’re found guilty, it’s a minimum o’ ten years hard labor.”

“Roy, Cara Lindsay is NOT here . . . and unless or until someone comes forward and ADMITS to leaving a baby on my door step, I have no way of knowing where that baby came from or who he might belong to,” Ben insisted. “Now . . . let me ask YOU something.”

“What?” Roy growled back.

“Who reported that girl missing?” Ben demanded. “Was it Tobias?”

Roy shook his head. “I’m sure he was notified--- ”

“Notified?!” Ben pounced on that with both feet, metaphorically speaking.

“He’s in San Francisco. That’s all Amos said,” Roy replied. “Seems a woman, apparently hired by Tobias t’ care for his daughter reported the gal missin’. Her name’s . . . . ” He frowned for a moment trying to remember. “I think it was Crawl . . . oh, dang it all, Crawl-Somethin’-Or-Other . . . . ”

A chill shot down the entire length of Ben’s spine, leaving the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. “Was it . . . Roy . . . was that woman’s name Crawleigh? VIVIAN Crawleigh?”

“Yeah. Amos said her name IS Crawleigh, but he didn’t give her first name,” Roy replied. “Ben, you . . . you ain’t thinkin’ this woman’s the Widow Danvers’ cousin now . . . are ya?!”

“I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit the thought’s crossed my mind,” Ben said grimly, remembering how terrified Stacy was toward the end of the last school year, when Myra Danvers tried to blackmail him into doing her bidding by threatening his daughter with the prospect of being placed in that woman’s custody.

“I s’pose I can find out, but it ain’t gonna make a shred o’ difference,” Roy said sternly. “The law says Tobias Lindsay’s got legal custody o’ his daughter, what with her bein’ a minor, AND her baby . . . unless YOU can come up with proof . . . ‘n by proof, I mean SOLID proof, somethin’ that’s gonna stand up in court, that shows him t’ be unfit.”

“Roy . . . . ”

“What?”

“I’m gonna lay all my cards on the table,” Ben decided. “But, you got to promise me you’ll hear me out.”

Roy Coffee straightened his posture and folded his arms across his chest. “Ok, Ben . . . I’m listenin’.”

“As I said before, Cara Lindsay’s not HERE . . . at the Ponderosa,” Ben began. “She’s a patient at Saint Mary’s Hospital. Two of my men found her out on the road between here and town, nearly frozen to death day before yesterday.”

“The very same day you found that baby on your doorstep,” Roy quietly, yet very pointedly, observed.

“That’s right.”

“So that baby you got inside IS Cara Lindsay’s baby.”

“Yes. She admitted to leaving her son outside our kitchen door.”

The scowl on Roy’s face deepened. “You’ve SEEN Miss Lindsay?” he queried,

Ben nodded. “Stacy and I visited her at the hospital yesterday afternoon,” he replied, then, related the details of that visit, including the information given him by Mother Gibson. He also shared everything Paul Martin had told him and his sons a couple of days before.

“You actually see the wounds on Cara’s back ‘n leg?” Roy asked.

“No, of COURSE not,” Ben said curtly, “but Paul Martin and the sisters presently caring for her HAVE . . . something I’m almost certain they’d be willing to testify to in a court of law, if it comes down to that . . . . ”

“Ben, her wounds ARE proof positive SOMEONE’S been beatin’ up on her, I’ll grant ya that,” Roy said curtly. “But it AIN’T proof Tobias was the one who done it.”

Ben frowned. “Aww, come ON, Roy,” he snorted derisively, “no one ELSE could’ve--- ”

“There’s the woman Tobias hired t’ look after the gal,” Roy argued. “SHE had plenty o’ opportunity . . . more ‘n Tobias when ya consider he went t’ work six days outta the week . . . ‘n if she’s the same Mrs. Crawleigh who was all set t’ take Stacy out t’ Ohio ‘til you ‘n your boys showed up at Fort Charlotte? Well, from what YOU told me yourself, Ben, she’s got a whole long history o’---”

“Dammit, Roy, so does Tobias!” Ben angrily shot right back. “You know as well as I do, after Ellenora died, if he wasn’t neglecting that li’l gal of his, he was beating her within an inch of her life for . . . for things she didn’t even do most of the time . . . all because he blamed that poor child for her own mother’s death. I heard him say so many times . . . and so have YOU.”

“ . . . ‘n so did just about every Tom, Dick, ‘n Harry, livin’ here at the time,” Roy said, his voice rising. “But we couldn’t prove it in a court o’ law then, ‘n ten’ll getcha one, we can’t NOW.”

“Does that mean you intend to hand Cara and her baby over to Tobias when he comes for them?” Ben demanded.

“I don’t like it any more ‘n YOU do, Ben. But unless you can come up with proof Tobias is unfit . . . ‘n by that I mean concrete proof that’ll hold up in court, the LAW says that’s EXACTLY what I gotta DO.”

“Roy, there‘s GOT to be evidence that proves Tobias is unfit, and I mean to find it,” Ben declared with far more confidence than he felt, “but I need time.”

“I can give ya ten days, Ben.”

“Ten days?!” Ben echoed, dismayed and incredulous. “That’s all?”

“ ‘Fraid so.”

“That’s not very much time.”

“That’s all I can give ya,” Roy said somberly. “Assumin’ Amos wired Tobias same time as he wired me, I figure it’s gonna take him that long t’ travel from San Francisco t’ Carson City. I can’t hold off wirin’ Amos as t’ that gal’s whereabouts any longer ’n THAT.”

 

Jack Cranston’s gut instincts told him time was of the essence.

After spending what turned out to be a delightful evening and restful night at the home of his old friend and shipmate, Adam Cartwright, he had left Sacramento early the following morning . . . .

 _“ . . . much to the chagrin of those two youngsters of his,”_ Jack mused silently with a broad grin. Benjy and Dio Cartwright couldn’t get enough his and their father’s stories about their harrowing adventures on the high seas and in various ports of call around the world. _“Been a long time since I’ve had such a captivating captive audience . . . . ”_ It seemed they’d barely started when Adam firmly reminded the two children that the next day was a school day, and he’d already allowed them to stay up an hour past their bedtime.

Jack had left the Cartwright abode early next morning after a quick breakfast of toast and coffee. As he rode back to town intent on purchasing a ticket for the next stage out, his thoughts turned to the wealthy couple who had hired him.

His clients were the Mister and Mrs. Reginald Alfonse Wyndham, a pair of socialites who reminded him of the pickle faced Mister and Mrs. Andrews, whose portraits had been rendered by an English painter named Gainsborough. Theirs . . . the Wyndhams . . . was a marriage of convenience linking the name of a venerable, though impoverished, old family to wealth accumulated by a ruthless business man and his social climbing wife. Though they had been married the better part of the last decade, they yet remained without issue, to put matters in Biblical terms.

Three years ago, the Wyndhams decided to adopt a baby, and were put in contact with Tobias Lindsay, Esquire, through the cousin of a woman who had been a close friend of Mrs. Wyndham’s mother for many years. The attorney procured the a baby girl in amazingly short order, much to the delight of the adoptive parents and grandparents. Their joy was extremely short lived for within a year, the child was dead. The Wyndhams’ physician declared the cause of death to be an illness passed through intimate contact with ladies of the evening, to use the polite words.

Almost from the minute their child was declared dead, the Wyndhams began to seek redress from Mister Lindsay, to no avail. Now . . . finally . . . as a last resort, they had turned to the Pinkerton Agency, at the urging of Mrs. Wyndham’s mother.

 _“According to the report, the Wyndhams agreed to pay this Mister Lindsay nine thousand bucks up front . . . and nine thousand more on delivery,”_ Jack silently mused. Plus expenses. Quite a bit, in his own humble opinion, to pay a lawyer to simply draw up adoption papers . . . .

Upon arriving back in Sacramento, Jack learned that the very next stage scheduled to leave that morning was carrying freight consisting of six bags of mail bound for Carson City and three large trunks on the first leg of a journey from Sacramento to some big city back east, but no passengers.

“So . . . when does the next stage after THAT leave?” Jack asked the ticket agent at the stage depot.

“Ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” the small, rotund little man replied.

“Too late,” Jack muttered under his breath.

“What’d you say, Mister?”

“I said I’m in a hurry,” Jack replied as he placed two five dollar bills on the counter.

“Why? You rob a bank or something?” the ticket agent queried, favoring Jack with a suspicious glare.

“No, and for the record, I’ve not KILLED anybody either,” Jack said, “but I DO need to reach Carson City as soon as possible if not sooner, and I’m more than willing to make it worth your while.” He took another five dollar bill from his wallet and placed down on top of the two lying on the counter.

“I’m gonna hafta charge you by the pound, Mister,” the ticket agent said firmly, as he grabbed the three five dollar bills from the counter and stuffed them into his shirt pocket.

“ ‘S ok,” Jack agreed with an indifferent shrug, “the folks I’m working for can well afford to pick up the tab . . . . ”

 

“Ain’t often find myself haulin’ people on the mail run,” the driver off handedly remarked to the big man seated beside him, with a freight ticket pinned to his jacket, after they had passed beyond the city limits of Sacramento.

Jack Cranston looked over at the driver and grinned. “Like I told the man behind the ticket counter back in Sacramento, I need to be in Carson,” he replied, “sooner as opposed to later.”

“Still ‘n all, big fella like YOU payin’ by the pound, must’ve cost a pretty penny,” the driver said. “ . . . uhhh, you ain’t some kinda lawman or somethin’ . . . ARE ya?” He glared over at Jack through eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“Nope. I‘m NOT a lawman,” Jack replied. He, then, turned and held out his hand. “Name’s Jack Cranston.”

“Angus Dawson,” the driver replied, as they quickly shook hands. “Your trip t’ Carson City . . . is it business or pleasure?”

“I hope to combine a little bit of both,” Jack replied. “A good friend of mine told me I should look up a man by the name of Lindsay . . . Tobias Lindsay . . . after I’ve taken care of business. Said this guy could show me a very good time.”

Angus snorted derisively. “That ol’ sourpuss?! Mister Cranston . . . . ”

“Aww, you might as well call me Jack,” the Pinkerton man said. “We’ve got a long trip ahead of us and besides . . . I’ve always tended to think of Mister Cranston as being my PA’S name.”

“Fine ‘n dandy with me, if YOU’LL call me Angus,” the driver said.

“You, uhhh . . . sound as if you don’t care too much for this Mister Lindsay,” Jack remarked.

“Jack, I’m gonna be up front ‘n honest. Either that ‘good’ friend o’ yours is pullin’ real hard on your leg or he ain’t the good friend you think he is,” Angus said bluntly.

“Oh?”

“Mister Lindsay’s a good enough lawyer, I s’pose, if ya want a man t’ help ya draw up a will . . . or maybe look over a contract to make sure everything’s on the up ‘n up, but he’s no one’s friend.”

“Really?”

“ ‘Fraid so.”

“Why’s that?”

“I guess the biggest reason is the way he thinks he’s worlds better ‘n everybody else,” Angus said, grimacing as if he had just bitten into something very sour. “His ma, God rest her soul, was the exact same way. Nobody good enough to associate with ‘em.”

“Sounds lonely.”

Yeah . . . sure does, now that ya say so,” Angus said wryly. “Still ‘n all, I can’t say I feel sorry for him or that ol’ battle axe he called Ma. I mean a man . . . and a woman, too . . . reap what they sow, right?”

“Yes, that’s very true,” Jack agreed. “Sad perhaps, but true nonetheless.”

“The one I DO feel sorry for is that li’l gal of his,” Angus continued, his voice softening a mite.

“Mister Lindsay has a daughter?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. Now mind, I’ve only seen her in passing,” Angus said, “but when I HAVE seen her? She’s always looked so sad.”

“What about that child’s mother?“ Jack asked.

“Dead ‘n buried, may God rest her soul,” Angus replied. “I heard tell she was killed in some kinda street accident in Virginia City . . . what?” He frowned, while he silently worked out the years. “It’s been a good ten years at least. Maybe eleven.”

“Virginia City?” Jack echoed, as he turned and looked over at the driver with left eyebrow slightly upraised. “Kind of a long way from home, isn’t it?”

“Virginia City WAS home back when his wife was still livin’,” Angus explained. “He made quite a name for himself, too, not long before his wife died.”

“Really? How so?” Jack asked.

“Seems he proved a young man . . . a local boy . . . innocent o’ murder ‘n saved him from a sure hangin’ ” Angus replied. “That boy didn‘t have ONE deck stacked against him . . . he had two, maybe three.”

“ . . . and this Tobias Lindsay got him off?”

Angus nodded. “He not got that boy off, but found out who really done it t’ boot.”

“Impressive,” Jack murmured softly. “Very impressive. He must have quite a reputation for himself as a defense attorney by this time.”

“He would’ve, I suppose, if his wife hadn’t died the way she did,” Angus said. “I don’t know all the details, but damn near everyone over there says he saw her die, but couldn’t do anything to stop it. He took to drinkin’, ‘n by all accounts damn near drunk himself t’ death.”

“That’s a shame,” Jack said, not without a small measure of sympathy.

“Ol’ Miz Lindsay, his ma that is, went t’ Virginia City ‘n brought him and his li’l gal t’ live with HER in Carson,” Angus said. “She went on t’ HER reward . . . I think it’s been two years now, maybe three. Caught cold just after Christmas that turned t’ pneumonia. Caught a lot o’ folks by surprise, though . . . . ”

“Oh?”

“Yep! Folks said she was so mean she didn‘t merit heaven ‘n the devil wasn’t real anxious to have her around,” Angus guffawed.

An amused smile pulled at the corner of Jack Cranston’s mouth. “A woman like that . . . . ” he chuckled softly and shook his head. “I, uhhh, hope her shade’s not come back to haunt the ol’ homestead.”

“Amen t’ THAT!” Angus muttered, as he hurriedly crossed himself.

“So what’s Tobias doing these days now that his mother’s gone, his daughter’s grown, like as not, and he’s not gone on to be a stellar defense attorney?” Jack asked.

“He does lawyer work . . . nothin’ fancy like being a trial lawyer, just stuff like helping’ a body draw up a will, or maybe reading’ through a contract, t’ make sure everything’s on the up ‘n up,” Angus replied. “Although . . . . ”

“Although . . . what?’ Jack prompted when the stagecoach driver didn’t immediately resume.

“Maybe I shouldn’t say anything,” Angus said ruefully. “T’ was a rumor goin’ around awhile back . . . nothin’ but idle gossip, like as not . . . . ”

“Now you’ve really got me curious,” Jack said with a grin.

“I dunno . . . . ” Angus murmured, shaking his head.

“I assure you, I’m the soul of discretion,” Jack said, then shrugged. “But, if you don’t feel right in telling me . . . . ”

“Well, maybe there’s no harm, since nothin’s ever come of it,” Angus hedged. “Now mind, I ain’t that well acquainted with Mister Lindsay ‘n all . . . . ”

“I understand.”

“I, uhh, s’pose a lawyer like Mister Lindsay can make a decent enough livin’ doin’ what he does ‘n all . . . . ”

“You mean drawing up wills, things like that?” Jack queried.

“Yeah,” Angus replied. “Some folks though . . . Miss Barnes mostly . . . . ”

“Who’s Miss Barnes?”

“Her name’s Iva Mae Barnes. Works at the post office. She’s the kind who makes a point o’ knowing everybody’s business, if ya get what I mean.”

Jack grinned. “Sounds like the town gossip.”

“Dang walkin’ newspaper, that’s what she is,” Angus said rancorously. “Piece of advice. Jack?”

“What’s that?”

“If you have the misfortune o’ runnin’ into that woman when ya hit Carson? Don’t speak, don’t tip your hat, don’t look her in the eye,” Angus said. “You do, she’ll talk your ear off.”

“Thanks for telling me, Angus,” Jack said, while making himself a mental note to seek out this Iva Mae Barnes as soon as possible after reaching Carson City. “So what’s Miss Barnes have to say about Mister Lindsay?”

“She prattles on ‘n on about how Mister Linday’s livin’ beyond his means,” Angus explained. “Got a point about his clothes, I reckon . . . . ”

“How so?” Jack asked.

“Anytime I’VE ever seen him, he’s ALWAYS in his Sunday best,” Angus explained. “Real fine material, ‘n custom made t’ boot, takin’ into account how well everything seems t’ fit him. None o’ that comes cheap y’ know.”

“I know, believe me,” Jack said with a sigh and a wry roll of the eyes heavenward.

“He also bought himself a real fine house not long after the old lady died.”

“His mother?”

Angus nodded. “Sold her house in town ‘n moved into a real fancy place out in Gold Hill. That I know for fact.” He fell silent for a moment, then added as an afterthought, “ ‘Course it’s possible the old lady left him a big pile o’ money when she went to her reward.”

“Wealthy?”

“Had more gold than ol’ King Midas, so I’ve heard, ’n a miserly ol’ bag t’ boot.”

“Sounds like my ma’s oldest sister,” Jack observed with a chuckle. “Aunt Jennie. My pa once said she was so grasping, she could squeeze two bits together and come up with a buck in change.”

Angus threw back his head and roared. “Yep. Sounds like the late Mrs. Lindsay ’n your Aunt Jenny had a lot in common.” He sighed and shook his head. “Miss Barnes swore up ‘n down the ol’ lady bought her furniture ‘n clothes second hand from the church thrift shop.”

“So did Aunt Jenny.”

“Don’t rightly know how much ol’ Mrs. Lindsay had put by, but she must still be rollin’ over in her grave at the way her son ran through it all like water,” Angus continued, “what with that big house he bought . . . the fancy duds, ’n all the trips he’s been makin’ out t’ San Francisco since.”

“San Francisco, ’ey?” Jack queried. “Business or pleasure?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Angus grunted, “but if I was to guess? I’d say business ‘cause the man’s been sober as a judge since he and his li’l gal moved in with the ol’ lady, ‘n . . . well, takin’ into account how he thinks himself better ‘n everyone else, he ain’t the type to take up with a lady o’ the evening’ if you, ummm . . . get my drift?”

“I do,” Jack said, “I do indeed.”

“I remember hearin’ a rumor goin’ ‘round . . . ohh, not long after the ol’ lady went to her reward, God bless her soul,” Angus continued. “Somethin’ ‘bout him buyin’ babies ‘n sellin’ them to rich folks out in San Francisco.”

Jack turned to Angus with left eyebrow slightly upraised. According to the report given him by his immediate supervisor, that would have been around the time the Wyndhams’ adopted their baby daughter.

“Yeah . . . I know . . . sounds kinda silly when ya say it out loud,” Angus continued with a sheepish grin. “Somebody, like as not, took it the wrong way when he looked over adoption papers f’r someone else ‘n told Miss Barnes.”

“So . . . out of curiosity . . . you know anything about Mister Lindsay’s daughter?” Jack asked. “Apart from the fact that she looks very sad every time you’ve seen her?”

“She ain’t much of a LI’L gal actually. Old enough t’ leave school, I think,” Angus replied, “but y’ know . . . now that I think on it, I ain’t seen much of her since . . . . ” He fell silent for a moment to do a bit of mental figuring. “I guess it’s been since last fall. Saw him ‘n that ol’ grouch of a housekeeper in church back in November, on the day Mister Lincoln, may God rest his soul, declared t’ be a day of givin’ thanks,” Angus said slowly, thoughtfully, “but not the girl.”

“Has she been ill?”

Angus shrugged. “I really can’t say . . . . ”

 

After breakfast, Ben retreated his favorite chair next to the fireplace with Roy Coffee’s words still echoing in his ears.

 

 _“I can give ya ten days, Ben.”_

 _“Ten days?! That’s all?”_

 _“ ‘Fraid so.”_

 _“That’s not very much time.”_

 _“That’s all I can give ya . . . . ”_

 

A week and a half . . . .

Ten days!

Assuming Adam DID know how to reach his friend, the Pinkerton Detective, it was highly unlikely that man could reach Virginia City in time to help Ben unearth the evidence needed to prevent Tobias Lindsay from resuming custody of his daughter and infant grandson.

A knock at the door drew the head of the Cartwright household from his doleful musings, much to his relief. “I’LL get it, Hop Sing,” he called out as he rose and stretched.

The caller was Father Rutherford.

“Brendan! Good to see you. Please . . . come in,” Ben invited, greeting the priest with a warm smile.

“Thank you, Ben,” Father Brendan replied, as he stepped into the house and divested himself of his coat and hat. “George at the telegraph office asked me to bring you this . . . . ” He fished an envelope out of the inside pocket of his coat before hanging it along with his hat on one of the pegs beside the door.

“Thank you,” Ben responded. “Probably from Adam . . . . ”

“How’s he doing, Ben?” Father Brendan asked as the two men walked over toward the furniture clustered around the fireplace.

“He, Teresa, and the children are doing fine,” Ben replied. He invited the priest to sit with a broad sweeping gesture of his arm, then resumed his place in the red leather chair.

Father Brendan smiled. “I’m very glad to hear it,” he murmured softly with a complacent smile. “No more interactions with the, ummm . . . supernatural?”

“No, thank heaven,” Ben replied, as Father Brendan sat down on the end of the settee nearest the red leather chair. He opened the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper, neatly folded in half. The message was indeed the expected reply from Adam:

 

“Adam Cartwright  
Sacramento, California

Benjamin Cartwright  
Virginia City, Nevada

Pa,

Jack Cranston already investigating T Lindsay for unnamed clients, willing to share information.

Heading for Carson, will contact you on arrival.

Adam.”

 

“I . . . hope it’s not bad news . . . . ” Father Brendan ventured, as Ben returned the slip of paper to the envelope.

Ben shook his head. “No . . . not bad news,” he replied, “though it still may end up being too little too late to help Cara Lindsay.”

“Oh?”

Ben shared the contents of the wire with Father Brendan. “In the meantime, Roy Coffee got a wire from the sheriff in Carson City informing him of the girl’s disappearance. He’s given me ten days to come up with proof that Cara has good reason to be afraid of Tobias . . . and that his intentions toward his grandson may not be in the boy’s best interests,” Ben explained.

“Am I to assume you believe Miss Lindsay’s allegations?” Father Brendan asked.

“Like I told Roy earlier . . . I don’t know WHAT to believe,” Ben replied. “On the one hand, I find it very difficult to imagine that a man would actually sell his grandchild . . . his own flesh and blood . . . to the highest bidder, even if that child WAS born out of wedlock. However . . . . ”

“Yes?”

“After talking with Cara, there’s no doubt in MY mind . . . no doubt at all that SHE believes her own allegations,” Ben continued in a somber tone of voice, “and those beliefs have led her to make reckless and desperate decisions that could have all to easily ended up costing her life and the life of her baby. That and the physical abuse she’s suffered tells me something’s very wrong, Brendan.”

“I agree with you one hundred percent, Ben. Mother Catherine told me this morning that Miss Lindsay opened up a little to Sister Anne last night . . . . ”

“I’m listening.”

“The father of her child is a young man by the name of Gabe Jarvis,” Father Brendan began.

“Gabe Jarvis . . . Gabe . . . Jarvis,” Ben repeated the name slowly. He frowned. “I feel I should know that name . . . . ”

“I did, too,” Father Brendan said, “so I did some checking.”

“ . . . and?”

“In the baptismal records, dated roughly seventeen going on eighteen years ago, I found an infant, aged three months, by the name Gabriel Harrison Jarvis,” Father Brendan replied. “His parents were Raymond Jarvis and the former Abigail Harrison.”

“Ray Jarvis?!”

Father Brendan nodded his head.

“Yes . . . NOW I remember . . . . ” Ben said slowly. “Ray Jarvis came to work for me . . . had to be within a year or two after Adam left to attend college. They had two daughters, then, and a year or so later, had a son, whom they named Gabriel, for Ray’s oldest brother, who died young in a hunting accident.

“The Jarvis family left a few years later,” Ben continued. “Ray said an uncle had died and left him a substantial sum of money . . . more than enough to buy the farm he‘d always dreamed of. Last I heard the Jarvis family purchased a respectable plot of land a few miles north of Carson City,”

“I‘d heard that, too,” Brendan said. “Cara told Sister Anne she met Gabe for the first time at the general store when she and her grandmother stopped in to make a few purchases. The both of them were almost thirteen. They were friends at first, something she kept from her father and grandmother because she knew they wouldn’t approve. Over time, their friendship deepened, and grew into . . . something more.”

“THAT being the case, I’d sure like to know where Gabe IS in all of this,” Ben said with a scowl on his face. “The Ray Jarvis I remember was a decent, honorable man. I can’t imagine he’d allow his son to turn away from HIS responsibility to Cara and that li’l fella upstairs.”

“First of all, Ben, I have the feeling that Ray Jarvis died some years ago,” Father Brendan said slowly. “When Cara met Gabe, he was WORKING for the man who owns the general store to help support his family. Second, Sister Anne told me that Gabe knows nothing about the baby, and that Cara’s quite adamant that he NEVER know.”

“Really.” Ben frowned. “Did she say why?”

Brendan shook his head.

“Did Cara say whether or not TOBIAS knows about Gabe being the father of her child?” Ben asked.

“According to Sister Anne, Cara refused to tell him who the father of her child is,” Brendan replied. “Ben . . . . ”

“Yes, Brendan?”

“If there’s anything I can do to help . . . anything at all . . . . ” A wry smile tugged hard at the corner of his mouth. “I could even go to Carson City and nose around with Monsignor Kramer going through his annual ‘you’re supposed to be retired, Father Brendan, it’s past time you acted like it’ phase about three weeks early . . . . ”

“Joe’s leaving for Carson City first tomorrow morning to do just that,” Ben said slowly. “I’ll pass on to him everything you just told me, and ask him find the Jarvis family and pay Gabe a visit. If that young man honest ‘n truly DOESN’T know about that li’l fella upstairs . . . I, for one, think it’s high time he DID, Cara’s protestations aside.”

“I’m with YOU, Ben,” Father Brendan said earnestly. “It’s not right for Cara to be carrying this burden alone. When I return to the rectory, I’ll certainly keep my ear to the ground. If I find out anything else about the Lindsays, I’ll send you word.”

“Thank you,” Ben said gratefully. “In the meantime, if you’re in no hurry to return to town, Hop Sing will be serving up lunch in about another hour or so, if you’d care to stay . . . . ”

“Thank you, Ben,” Father Brendan responded with a broad grin. “I think I WILL take you up on your invitation. It’s been far too long since I last sat down to one of Hop Sing’s fine meals.”

 

“Oh NO! No!” Mother Catherine groaned. She stood behind the desk in her office, with head bowed, eyes closed, gingerly massaging her temples against what she hoped and prayed wouldn’t turn into another migraine. “Father Kramer . . . please! Tell me you DIDN’T!”

Monsignor Obadiah Kramer took a deep breath and pulled himself up to the very fullness of his height of just under three inches shorter than the mother superior. “I most certainly and assuredly DID!” he declared stoutly, with an emphatic nod of his head and beefy arms folded defiantly across his broad chest.

“You had no right!” Sister Anne cried out, anguished and alarmed.

“I had EVERY right, Sister, and a moral OBLIGATION,” Monsignor Obadiah returned in a lofty, imperious tone of voice. “Are either of you aware that Miss Lindsay is a runaway?”

“What Miss Lindsay may be or may NOT be for that matter is completely irrelevant, Monsignor,” Mother Catherine countered, all the while laboring valiantly to keep her swift rising anger from getting the better of her. “At the moment, Miss Lindsay is our PATIENT.”

“Were you aware that the sheriff of Carson City sent Sheriff Coffee a wire inquiring as to Miss Lindsay’s whereabouts?” the monsignor continued his interrogation, very pointedly focusing his entire attention on the mother superior. “Seems someone over there reported her missing.”

“I did NOT know that,” Mother Catherine replied quite truthfully, “and even if I DID, it wouldn’t have mattered. Miss Lindsay is in desperate need of medical attention and care, which WE’RE morally obligated to provide no matter what her circumstances.”

“That doesn’t alter the fact that YOU were required BY LAW, Mother Gibson, to notify that child’s father as to her whereabouts the instant you learned of her identity,” Monsignor Obadiah stubbornly maintained. “Your refusal to do so left me no choice BUT to send a wire to Mister Lindsay myself, informing him that his daughter is here in your hospital.”

“How COULD you?!” Sister Anne demanded and accused, leveling a murderous glare at the monsignor. “Don’t you realize that girl’s father is . . . well, if he’s NOT evil incarnate, he comes damned close.” Her entire body trembled with rage toward the monsignor, and fear for her patient.

“I will NOT have one such as YOU speaking to me in that manner, Sister,” Monsignor Obadiah said stiffly, “and if you’re referring to Miss Lindsay’s ridiculous assertions about her own father wanting to sell her baby--- ”

“ . . . and how would YOU know about that?” Mother Catherine demanded. She stood with her back straight as a poker with fists planted firmly on her hips. “I didn’t--- ”

“No, YOU didn’t, Mother Gibson,” Monsignor Obadiah returned, “and you were very remiss in your duties by not keeping me informed. Thank the Lord there’s someone among you who IS aware of her place and her duty, else your community, your entire order, and MY church would have almost certainly ended up in a whole world of trouble with the law.”

“ . . . and did Sister Bridget ALSO tell you about the scars and open wounds on her back . . . or about the burn on her leg that’s become badly infected, Monsignor?!” Mother Catherine asked, taking perverse satisfaction in seeing the shocked look on his face when she named the informer.

“H-How---?!”

“It’s NO secret that Sister Bridget’s been toadying up to you almost from the minute you arrived at Saint Mary’s in the hope that you’ll appoint her as MY successor,” Mother Gibson said with a touch of rancor.

“THAT decision is not mine to make, as YOU very well know,” Monsignor Obadiah returned. Though he looked her straight in the face, his eyes fell very short of meeting hers. “The governing counsel in Baltimore and the diocesan bishop who oversees them decide who is to become mother superior in your place.”

“Apparently Sister Bridget has forgotten,” Mother Catherine wryly observed. “I DO hope you’ll see fit to remind her at some point in time.”

“Mother Catherine . . . are you accusing her father of inflicting the grievous wounds you speak of on the person of his daughter?” Monsignor Obadiah growled, pointedly ignoring her previous remark.

“Yes,” Sister Anne angrily shot right back. “Who ELSE could have beat her so cruelly?!”

“Do you have anything to offer as PROOF?”

“No,” Mother Catherine responded through clenched teeth.

“Then let me give you both OTHER food for thought. Though we’ve no idea for sure how long that girl’s been on the run, it’s more than clear she’s been on her own for quite awhile. With no money, I would imagine, and nothing but whatever clothing she had on her back, she almost certainly had to STEAL food . . . and clothing, too, as her own wore thin . . . OR the money to buy them,” Monsignor Obadiah said, his voice filled with smug contempt. “Has it ever occurred to either of you that the marks on Miss Lindsay’s back are the result of a well deserved beating from someone who caught her stealing from him?”

“While I’m forced to admit that it’s possible Miss Lindsay came by some of her most recent wounds that way, it does NOT account for the scarring left by older wounds,” Mother Catherine countered, “nor does that adequately explain that burn wound someone inflicted on her leg.”

“All right, for the sake of argument, Mother Gibson, let’s assume someone WAS cruel to that girl,” the monsignor said stiffly. “You still have no proof her father was the person responsible.”

“ . . . any more than YOU have proof, Monsignor, of Mister Lindsay’s innocence,” Mother Catherine shot right back.

Monsignor Obadiah glared murderously at the mother superior for a long moment, rendered speechless by what he saw as a blatant challenge on her part to the power and authority, which rightfully belonged to HIM. He, abruptly cleared his throat. “Mother Gibson, in view of your record, I CAN and SHOULD by all rights have you excommunicated for your involvement in this disgraceful affair, but I won’t since you’ll soon be leaving our community to care for your ailing your sister out in Denver,” he said stiffly.

“As for YOU, Sister Anne,” he continued, “I’ll chalk YOUR involvement in this up to having been under influence that’s been at best VERY questionable . . . THIS TIME. But mind . . . YOU tread on thin ice. On VERY thin ice.”

With that, the monsignor abruptly turned heel and strode briskly out of the mother superior’s office.

“Oh, Mother . . . NOW what’ll we do?!” Sister Anne wailed, wringing her hands.

“I’m reasonably certain we can make a good, solid case for keeping Miss Lindsay HERE given her precarious physical condition,” Mother Catherine said grimly. “We’ll need Doctor Martin’s testimony, but I foresee no difficulty with that. He was every bit as incensed as WE were when he saw Miss Lindsay’s wounds.”

“REASONABLY certain?!” Sister Anne repeated those words over and over in her mind, as she twisted her cincture in her hands. Though the mother superior’s words were meant as comfort and encouragement, she was very far from feeling reassured.

“I must get word to Mister Cartwright . . . and Father Rutherford, too . . . about this latest development,” Mother Catherine continued, “as soon as possible.”

“Where IS Father Rutherford?”

“At the Ponderosa,” Mother Catherine replied. “He left right after breakfast to see Mister Cartwright and to bring him up to date on the things Miss Lindsay told us last night.”

“Shall I send the stable boy out to the Ponderosa?”

Mother Catherine shook her head. “I’LL dispatch the stable boy.” A scowl black as a dangerous thundercloud deepened the lines and creases already present in her brow. “In the meantime, you’d best get back to your patient, but for now say nothing to her about Father Kramer’s actions.”

“Yes, Mother,” Sister Anne murmured softly, her thoughts churning a mile a minute. She was bound and determined that Cara Lindsay NOT be handed over to her father, law or no law, damn the consequences AND Monsignor Kramer, come what may.

 

“Mister Cartwright . . . if you, um . . . don’t mind my asking . . . what do you intend to do with that baby boy upstairs?” Irma Fielding ventured hesitantly. She was one of two women procured by Doctor Martin to serve as wet nurse for the infant left at the Cartwrights’ kitchen door. “Do YOU plan to adopt him?”

“Why do you ask?” Ben hedged, as he, his daughter, Mrs. Fielding, and Father Brendan sat down together at the dining room table for the noon meal.

“It’s NOT out of idle curiosity, of that I can assure you,” Irma returned, indignant, yet very much on the defensive. “I’m sure you know my sister, Lucille Ames . . . . ”

Ben did indeed. She had married William Ames, a dour, taciturn man and owner of a small spread called Easy Eight, and in the nine years following, gave him seven, healthy, robust children . . . all girls. The birth of the youngest, however, had proved exceedingly difficult, and Doctor Martin had sternly cautioned the Ames against having more children. Billy Ames never forced the issue with his wife, not wanting the prospect of her death in childbirth to burden his conscience, but the physician’s pronouncement nonetheless left him a bitter, disappointed man for he had desired a son above all else.

“Are you suggesting that I allow your sister and her husband to adopt the li’l fella upstairs?” Ben asked, appalled by the very thought.

“Yes,” Irma replied. “Though not rich, Billy and Lucille make a decent enough living with the Easy Eight Ranch, and are well able to provide for--- ”

“But . . . don’t they already HAVE seven children!?” Stacy gasped. The members of the Ames family kept to themselves by and large; and though they had always been polite enough anytime she had a chance encounter with them in town, they didn’t strike her as being a very happy family or a loving one.

“Yes, they do indeed have seven children,” Irma replied, “but ALL of them are GIRLS. A man needs a SON to carry on his name, otherwise his line dies with him.” She sighed and shook her head mournfully. “ . . . and poor Lucille, bless her dear heart, can’t have anymore children.”

“B-But Mister Ames’ line WON’T die with him,” Stacy argued. “His blood . . . and your sister’s, too . . . WILL continue through their daughters’ children and grandchildren.”

“Yes, Dear, but that’s NOT quite the same,” Irma said primly, in a faintly condescending tone of voice that made Stacy’s blood boil.

“Before giving any consideration to allowing someone to adopt that young man upstairs, I want to find out who his natural parents are . . . if I can,” Ben said quietly.

“Mister Cartwright! Surely y-you’re not thinking of . . . of giving that poor child upstairs back to the people who abandoned him?!” Irma gasped, horrified by the very notion.

“Pa said THEY probably need help, too . . . just like that li’l fella upstairs,” Stacy quietly took up for her father.

“Perhaps that’s so,” Irma sighed, then brightened slightly. “If that child’s natural parents prove to be unfit . . . and frankly, Mister Cartwright, I for one would be very surprised if they weren’t. Unfit, I mean. At any rate, I DO hope you’ll keep my sister in mind.”

“We’ll see,” Ben said evasively.

“Pa?” It was Joe. He ambled into the dining room from the kitchen, with Hoss following close behind. “Hey!” He grinned upon seeing Father Brendan seated at the table. “Long time no see, Padre! How’ve you been keeping yourself?”

Father Brendan rose, and shook hands first with Joe, then with Hoss. “I’ve been keeping myself quite busy, for a man who’s supposed to be semi-retired,” he replied, returning Joe’s smile with a warm one of his own. “How about YOU?”

“Tired, and glad to see Spring’s well on her way now,” Joe replied, his emerald green eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Tired?” Father Brendan queried.

“Yeah . . . tired,” Joe replied, his face a comically grotesque caricature of extreme weariness. He pulled out his chair from under the table and plopped himself down. “YOU would be, too, if you had someone like li’l sister over there . . . who was sick all winter . . . keeping you on YOUR toes.”

“Really, Grandpa, you oughtta be grateful,” Stacy returned with mock severity.

“Grateful?!” Joe echoed. “Grateful? For what?!”

Stacy grinned. “For all the exercise you got from my keeping you on your toes,” she replied. “This is gonna be the first springtime ever we won’t hafta hear you griping about the love handles you usually grow during the winter.”

“Hmpf! I’ll have YOU know, Kiddo, that I’ve never, not in my whole life, EVER, had love handles,” Joe immediately returned in a lofty tone of voice. The snooty look on his face, affected for his sister’s benefit, quickly underwent a transformation to one of pure mischief, as he turned his attention toward Hoss. “Now Big Brother on the other hand . . . . ”

Hoss opened his mouth to give voice to the snappy retort sitting at the very tip of his tongue.

“Hoss,” Ben said sternly, noting with a measure of relief that his big son immediately closed his mouth without uttering a word. “Joe . . . Stacy, you, too. We have guests.” This last he said with a pointed glance over at Father Brendan and at Irma Fielding’s beet red face.

“Yes, Pa,” Joe and Stacy responded in unison.

Hop Sing served up a scrumptious lunch of pork roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, applesauce, hot, fluffy biscuits fresh from the oven, and apple pie left over from supper the night before. As the Cartwright family and their guests began eating their noon meal, there was a loud, insistent knocking on the front door.

“I’ll get it,” Joe offered. He rose to his feet and in very short order reached the front door.

Standing on the porch outside was a young man, tall and bean pole skinny. He clutched his hat in one hand, as he shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “ . . . uhh . . . you Mister Cartwright?” he asked.

Joe grinned. “I’m one of three,” he replied. “Which one are you looking for?”

“I have a message from Mother Superior for . . . . ” He frowned for a moment trying to remember. “I think she said to tell Mister BEN Cartwright?”

“Hey, Pa?” Joe turned toward the dining room and called out. “Pa, there’s someone here to see you.”

“Ask him in,” Ben replied, then turned to his daughter. “Stacy, would you please ask Hop Sing to set another place?”

“Yes, Pa,” Stacy replied, rising.

“Paul!” Father Brendan exclaimed, mildly surprised to see the rectory’s stable boy, Paul Klein, following Joe into the dining room. “Is . . . everything all right?”

Paul shook his head as he seated himself at the table. “Mother Superior sent me here with a message for Mister Cartwright, but she also told me you might be here . . . and if you were? She said I should tell YOU, too.”

“Young Man, does your message have to do with the patient my daughter and I visited yesterday?” Ben asked, with a sidelong glace over at Irma Fielding, who had placed her fork on the table alongside her place, and now watched Paul and Father Brendan with keen interest.

“Yes, Sir,” Paul replied.

“Miss Lin---?!

Ben placed his hand on the priest’s shoulder and shook his head, effectively stopping him from uttering the patient‘s name. “Brendan . . . and you, too, Young Man . . . why don’t we step over to my study?” he suggested. “The rest of you . . . . ” he continued, turning his attention to his sons and Irma Fielding, “please excuse us. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Well! I wonder what THAT’S all about?” Irma murmured softly, her eyes glued to the retreating backs of clan patriarch, priest, and stable boy.

 

“He did . . . WHAT?!” Father Brendan roared, angry and incredulous, less than a moment later.

“M-Mother Superior said to tell Mister Cartwright . . . and you, too, Father . . . that the monsignor sent a wire to the father of that girl Sister Anne’s been lookin’ after, tellin’ him where she is,” Paul nervously repeated his message, taken completely aback by the priest’s emotional outburst.

“Why that . . . that pompous---!!! So HELP me, when I get my hands on that self-righteous little toad---!!!”

“Simmer down, Brendan,” Ben warned.

Father Brendan’s anger immediately evaporated upon seeing the astonishment in Ben’s face and the wariness in Paul’s. “Sorry,” the priest ruefully apologized. “It’s just that I--- ”

Ben placed his hand on Father Brendan’s shoulder and gently squeezed. “It’s all right, Brendan, I understand,” he said, before turning his attention to Paul. “Thank you for bringing us Mother Gibson’s message, Son,” Ben continued. “I have a few things I’d like to talk over with Father Rutherford, so why don’t you g’won back to the table and have something to eat?”

“Y-Yes, Sir . . . thank you, Sir,” Paul stammered with deep, profound relief.

“Oh. One more thing, Son . . . . ”

“Yes, Mister Cartwright?”

“I’d appreciate it if you kept Mother Gibson’s message to yourself for the time being,” Ben said.

“Y-Yes, Sir. I will,” Paul promised.

“What happens now, Ben?” Father Brendan asked, after Paul had returned to the dining room table.

“Roy Coffee came by this morning to tell me that a woman apparently hired to look after Miss Lindsay reported her missing to the sheriff in Carson City a few days ago,” Ben replied. “He ALSO told me that the girl’s father was in San Francisco at the time. To make a long story short, Brendan, though Mister Lindsay WAS notified about his daughter’s disappearance, it’s going to take him a good week and a half, maybe two, to reach home. Roy’s given me ten days to find out whether or not there’s any substance to Miss Lindsay’s accusations.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you, Ben?” Father Brendan asked. “Anything at ALL?”

“Yes, Brendan,” Ben said grimly. “You can pray . . . because as things stand now? If what Miss Lindsay said about her father is true, I have a real strong feeling it’s gonna take a miracle to come up with the evidence to prove it.”

 

Upon returning to the table with Father Brendan, Ben was surprised to find only his two younger sons, and daughter.

“Mrs. Fielding’s gone upstairs t’ look after her baby ‘n our Li’l Fella,” Hoss explained, “ ‘n Paul high tailed it on back t’ the rectory. Is . . . everything all right?”

“Hoss . . . Stacy . . . I’ll fill the both of YOU in later,” Ben said. He, then, turned his attention to Joe. “I know you’d planned to leave for Carson City first thing in the morning, but time’s of the essence now. You said you were packed and ready to go?”

Joe nodded.

“Good. If ya leave NOW, I think you’ll just make it to town in time to catch the two o’clock stage out,” Ben said grimly. “Come on, Son . . . I’ll walk ya out to the barn.”

Father and son crossed the yard together, side by side, in silence. Upon entering the barn, Ben asked, “You remember Ray and Abigail Jarvis?”

“Mister Ray and Mrs. Abigail? Yeah. I remember ‘em,” Joe replied. “Why do you ask?”

“Their son, Gabe, is the father of that young man upstairs,” Ben explained. He, then, shared with Joe everything Father Brendan had told him before lunch.

Joe frowned. “So if Gabe IS the li’l guy’s father, where is he and why’s he NOT with Miss Lindsay?” he demanded, outraged and righteously indignant.

“That’s what I’m hoping YOU can find out,” Ben replied.

 

End of Part 2.


	3. Chapter 3

PART 3

 

 

“Sister, no . . . please . . . that’s too tight,” Cara Lindsay moaned. She was freezing cold one minute, burning up the next, and feeling lightheaded, almost nauseatingly so. “It . . . it HURTS, Sister, I . . . I c-can’t BEAR it!”

“Ssshhh!” Sister Anne furiously shushed her patient. For a time she remained perched on the edge of Cara Lindsay’s bed, unmoving, her entire body stiff as a board, her ears straining to catch even the slightest sound.

Nothing.

Sister Anne closed her eyes and exhaled the breath she had been holding. A quick glance at the regulator clock hanging on the wall above her patient’s head showed the time to be almost midnight.

“Sister?” Cara sobbed. “Please? Can’t you . . . c-can’t you loosen the b-bandage just a LITTLE?”

“All right,” Sister Anne reluctantly acquiesced. She unwound the long strip of white cloth, noting with sinking heart that the bandage was already stained with oozing from the badly infected burn. Worse, the girl’s leg was swollen now to nearly twice its normal size from her knee on down to toes already blackened from severe frostbite. The skin covering the entire lower leg had turned from snow white to a sickening grayish purple in the space of half a day.

The nun stared down at the stained bandage she held clasped tight in her hands, paralyzed by indecision. It was more than clear her patient was in desperate need of a doctor’s care . . . immediately, if not sooner. On the other hand, informing Mother Superior as to the girl’s fast deteriorating condition would be tantamount to handing her and her baby, as well, over to the man who had more than likely beaten and tormented her so cruelly.

 _“What to do? What to do? What to DO?”_ Sister Anne silently agonized.

 _Cara felt him before she actually saw him: the mattress sagging under the his weight as he gingerly eased himself down beside her . . . the warmth of his close proximity . . . the featherlike touch of his lips against her forehead . . . ._

 _“Gabe,” she sighed contentedly . . . ._

 _Gabe?!_

 _“G-Gabe? Gabe, no! Please! You’ve GOT to go . . . NOW!”_

Cara’s voice, hoarse and barely above the decibel of a whisper, roused Sister Anne from the paralysis of indecision that had for a time possessed her. She turned, and to her astonishment saw, not her patient, but the vision of another young woman, in and around the same age, who had just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, with the pinkest cheeks she had ever seen, a halo of fine, light brown curly hair surrounding a plump, cherubic face, and a pair of bright sapphire blue eyes.

“G-Gabe, if he . . . if he FINDS you, he‘ll KILL you . . . love you . . . love you too much . . . . ” Cara persisted, her head tossing back and forth.

 _Gabe shook his head and placed his finger to his lips, slightly pursed. “I’ve come for you, Cara . . . . ”_

 _Miss Lindsay?_

Cara’s eyes snapped wide open. She was astonished to find herself gazing up into Sister Anne‘s tear stained face. “Gabe! Where’s Gabe?” she frantically demanded.

“M-Miss Lindsay . . . Gabe’s not h-here,” Sister Anne stammered taken aback by her patient’s round, staring eyes, the breath coming in ragged gasps. Cara, bless her heart, had been heard speaking with the father of her child since the end of Matins this morning . . . .

 _“ . . . make that YESTERDAY morning,”_ Sister Anne silently amended, as her eyes strayed again to the clock . . . .

. . . begging him to leave. The frequency of these conversations and the desperation in her voice had escalated as the day had worn on, and her physical condition steadily worsened.

“I’ve GOT to find him,” Cara insisted as she pushed aside her bedclothes. She sat up with a loud grunt, and slipped her legs, one at a time, over the edge of her bed.

“Dear God!” Sister Anne gasped. She immediately moved in and placed restraining hands in Cara’s shoulders. “Miss Lindsay, please! Y-You’re in NO shape to--- ”

Cara gritted her teeth and shoved sister Anne aside with surprising strength given her deteriorating physical condition. “You DON’T understand!” she implored, her voice shaking. “I’ve got to find Gabe NOW, and WARN him before . . . before my father--- ”

“Cara, LISTEN to me!” Sister Anne begged, as she moved in once again to restrain her patient. “Gabe is NOT HERE! You . . . you were dreaming! You MUST have been!”

Cara’s shoulders slumped. For a long moment she remained seated on the edge of her bed, unmoving, staring over at Sister Anne through eyes round with disbelief. “But . . . . ” she finally, at length, whispered, “he seemed so REAL.”

“Sometimes dreams DO seem very real,” Sister Anne said briskly. “Now you close your eyes and rest, Miss Lindsay. We have a long trip ahead of us and . . . you’re going to need your strength.”

“Sister?”

“Yes, Child?”

“Where’d you say we’d be going?”

“Some place safe,” Sister Anne replied, as she set herself to the task of bandaging Cara’s leg wound once again.

“Where is he?” Cara demanded.

“W-Where is . . . who?”

“Gabe.”

“He’s SAFE, Miss Lindsay, I promise you . . . he‘s safe.” Sister Anne fervently hoped and prayed this was so, wherever the young man might be. “Now, you close your eyes and rest, while I finish gathering together everything we’re going to need.”

“Where’d ya say we’re going?” Cara asked once again.

“I’m taking you to a friend,” Sister Anne lied right through her pearly white teeth. She found it amazing, yet deeply disturbing how much easier the act of lying became with each telling. The woman, with whom Sister Anne had planned to seek shelter for herself and her patient, was no friend, not by any stretch of the imagination, and worse, their parting, to put it mildly, had been less than amicable. Sister Anne was banking heavily on the fact that the woman in question hated the institution of Mother Church and the good Monsignor Kramer in particular more than she hated her.

Cara closed her eyes and slipped into a fitful sleep, much to the great relief of her caretaker. Sister Anne quickly packed all of her patient’s medicines, about a half dozen or so rolls of fresh bandages, and an extra clean nightgown into a small, brown leather valise. Once that task was completed, she picked up the oil lamp from it’s place on the night table, next to Cara’s bed, and carried it to the window.

 _“BE there, Paul. Please, PLEASE . . . BE there!”_ Sister Anne silently, fervently prayed, as she placed the lamp in the window, and signaled by banking the light, then turning it up again three times.

Now came the hard part.

The waiting.

 

“It’s about damn time,” Paul Klein muttered under his breath when he saw Sister Anne’s signal. He stepped up to the gate, which opened out onto the driveway leading to the front entrance of the convent hospital, and signaled with his own lantern. He, then, moved back into the deep shadows to wait.

 

Sister Anne flew across the room to her patient’s bedside. “Cara . . . . ” she ventured in as loud a voice as she dared, “Cara! It’s time!” She put out her hand with the intention of gently shaking the girl to rouse her. “Cara, wa---!!!” Her words abruptly terminated in a started gasp. The girl’s temperature had spiked in the brief time it had taken her to signal Paul.

“Cara! Cara, wake UP!” Sister Anne implored as she shook her patient more vigorously. “Dear Lord, please . . . you’ve GOT to wake up . . . . ”

 

 _“Come ON, Sister Anne,”_ Paul, in the meantime, silently, earnestly begged. _“Dang it all, this is takin’ ‘WAY too long.”_ He had no idea as to how long he had actually waited, only that it seemed to be forever; and to be frank, he was anxious to have this whole mad venture over and done.

At length, the front door finally opened, and Sister Anne emerged, half dragging, half carrying her patient.

“Finally,” Paul whispered, deeply relieved, yet a little angry, too, for having allowed the desperate nun to talk him into this crazy idea of hers. Yes, her intentions were good and noble, but even so, nothing but trouble could possibly come of all this. “Buckboard’s just outside the gate,” he continued, as he scooped the near insensate Cara up into his strong, wiry arms. “Hey! She’s burnin’ UP!”

“Paul, will you for heaven’s sake keep your voice down?!” Sister Anne sternly admonished the young man.

“Dammit, Sister, this gal’s so hot she’s burnin’ ME,” Paul argued. “We gotta get her back.”

“No.”

“Sister Anne--- ”

“Paul, I didn’t come this far to turn back NOW,” Sister Anne rudely cut him off. “I AM a nurse--- ”

“I KNOW y’ are, but this gal needs a DOCTOR,” Paul said, his voice filled with fear.

“I can care for her,” Sister Anne declared. “Now please . . . for the love of GOD, Paul . . . get her into that buckboard.”

Paul knew only too well there was no arguing with Sister Anne when she spoke in that tone of voice. Resigning himself to whatever consequence was to come of this insane venture, he turned without a word and strode resolutely toward the buckboard.

“Did anyone see you?” Sister Anne demanded as she settled her patient in the back of the conveyance.

“No,” Paul said curtly. “Sister Anne . . . . ”

“What?” she snapped.

“You given thought to what we’re gonna do if she won’t let us stay?”

“She’ll let us stay,” Sister Anne replied with a calm complacence she was very far from feeling.

“Well what if she DON’T?” Paul demanded as he climbed up into the driver’s seat.

“I’ll cross THAT bridge . . . IF and WHEN we reach it.”

 

“Aw-ride, aw-ride, aw-ride, aw-ready,” Polly McPherson grumbled through clenched teeth, as she made her way to the front door of the small, yet lavishly appointed town house she called home. She paused to light the lamp placed on the small cherry wood table next to her favorite overstuffed armchair, then stole a glance at the grandfather’s clock set against the wall between the fireplace and the narrow staircase leading up to the second floor. _“Ain’ even quarter uh three inna mornin’,”_ she silently groused. “Whoever that is . . . it bedder damn’ sight be good.”

Polly took a moment to tie the sash of her robe, then threw open the front door. The angry reprimand, complete with a liberal sprinkling of colorful epithets, died before she could give them utterance the instant her eyes fell upon Sister Anne’s face. For what seemed an eternity, Polly stood frozen in place staring down at the young nun through eyes round as dinner plates. Though her mouth flapped up and down, no sound issued forth.

“May we . . . come in?” Sister Anne ventured hesitantly, as she eyed the older woman standing before her with an anxious frown.

“ . . . uhhh . . . yeah. Sure. Why not?” Polly murmured softly, not quite knowing what else to say. She, then, stepped aside.

Sister Anne and Paul quickly ushered Cara inside. “Take her on over to the settee and sit her down,” the nun told the stable hand in a low voice before turning to face Polly.

“Well . . . if you AIN’T the very last person I ever expected t’ darken my door ever again . . . you’re near the top o’ the list,” Polly remarked in a wry tone. “Instead o’ BURNIN’ in Hell, I guess this means we’re all gonna freeze our asses off.”

“Could be,” Sister Anne sighed wearily.

“Who’s your friend?” Polly demanded, inclining her head toward the settee, where Cara remained, half sitting, half leaning over.

“Her name is Cara,” Sister Anne replied.

“Not . . . Cara Lindsay . . . . ”

Sister Anne’s heart sank. “Y-You . . . know about, uhhh . . . . ?!”

“You’d be surprised at all the things I hear, ‘n long before Mrs. Kirk ‘n that damned church organist,” Polly declared, grimacing upon making mention of the two women most charitably referred to as a pair of walking newspapers.

“We need your help, Mother,” Sister Anne begged. “If we could just hide out here, until . . . well, until I can figure out what to do . . . please?”

Polly folded her arms across her ample bosom and glared down at her daughter. “Why should I?” she demanded. “Why don’t ya hide her out in your convent, or better yet . . . give her sanctuary in your church?”

“If you really know about Cara Lindsay, then you know very well why I can’t hide her in the convent or in the church,” Sister Anne returned with a touch of asperity.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I know all about it,” Polly sighed, as she unfolded her arms. “I also hope ya realize the lot of us could end up ‘way in over our heads in hot water if the sheriff, or somebody else finds her here.”

“Please, Aunt Polly?” Paul added his own voice to his cousin’s. “Nobody’ll know she’s here . . . in fact, when they find out Mag---, I, uhh mean Sister Anne . . . ‘n Cara over there are missin’ . . . this is gonna be the very last place folks’ll think o’ lookin’.”

“That’s for DAMNED sure,” Polly had to agree. “All right. Cara can stay . . . for now. Take her on up t’ the guest room.” She, then, returned her attention to Sister Anne. “Maggie,” Polly continued, addressing her daughter by her given name, “you can have your old room. Paul, you’re gonna hafta sleep on the settee.”

“ ‘S ok, Aunt Polly. It’s better ‘n where I usually sleep.”

“Good.” Polly yawned. “Maggie, you get Cara settled upstairs, then get t’ bed yourself. We’ll talk later, at a more reasonable hour o’ the mornin’.”

 

Abigail Jarvis overslept that morning . . . .

Again.

She was rudely awakened out of a sound sleep by the lowing of her stock, just as the grandfather’s clock in her great room downstairs struck the hour of eleven. Seemed ever since the day all her dreams, her hopes, and aspirations for her son, Gabe, were finally realized, the blessing of a good night’s sleep eluded her more and more. She dragged herself out of bed, threw on the clothing she had worn the day before, and made her way out to the barn after pausing at the kitchen sink to splash a handful of cold water on her face.

Abigail had just turned the cows out into the pasture behind the barn, when her ears picked the faint thundering of horse hooves in the distance. She latched the pasture gate, then headed toward the front of her house, moving at a brisk pace. There was something vaguely familiar about the green jacketed young man now dismounting from the back of his paint horse. Still, a woman living alone, nearly two miles from her nearest neighbor, couldn’t be too careful.

“Excuse me, Young Man . . . . ”

Joe turned and found himself staring into the barrel of a revolver in the trembling hand of a thin, careworn woman.

“ . . . I’ve never killed a man before, but there’s a first time for everything,” Abigail warned. “If you need to water your horse, the trough’s over there by the hitching post. Do it, and be quick about it.”

“M-Mrs. Abby?” Joe queried warily. If the frightened old woman leveling that revolver at the center of his chest was indeed the Mrs. Abby he remembered, she sure had changed since she and her family had left the Ponderosa . . . and not for the better. _“She could pass for Adam’s mother easily . . . and he’s not but a couple of years younger,”_ he silently mused. Her flaming red had had turned prematurely gray in the intervening years, and her voluptuous, woman’s body had withered away to thinness that bordered on emaciation. “I . . . guess you don’t remember me, Mrs. Abby,” he said, striving to speak in a calm, even tone of voice. “I’m Joe Cartwright.”

She peered into his face for a moment. “Little Joe?!”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Sorry . . . . ” Abigail apologized, as she slipped her revolver into one of the deep pockets of her apron. “A woman living out here alone can’t be too careful.”

“Alone?!” Joe echoed, his heart sinking.

“Now that Gabe’s gone,” Abigail replied.

“Gone?! G-gone WHERE?”

Abigail smiled. “Looks like we’ve got some catching up to do,” she observed. “Why don’t you come on in? I’ve some of that raisin walnut cake you used to like so much left over from last night’s supper, and I . . . . ” She yawned, right in Joe’s face, much to her embarrassment. “Sorry,” Abigail meekly apologized, “it’s NOT the company, it’s . . . well, I’m afraid I didn’t sleep very well last night . . . . ”

Joe hesitated. “I don’t want to put you out, Mrs. Abby . . . . ”

“You’re not,” Abigail insisted. “I can do with a cup of coffee right now, and it won’t be any trouble at all to fix up a little extra.”

Joe followed Abigail into the small, yet well maintained farm house, and seated himself at the kitchen table, just big enough to accommodate two. “So. How’ve you been, Mrs. Abby . . . since ya left the Ponderosa?”

“Ray, God rest his soul, and I have done all right, I s’pose,” Abigail replied as she set a pot of water on the stove to boil and ground enough beans to supply four cups of coffee. A proud smile tweaked at the corner of her mouth as her gaze took in the warm, inviting, kitchen with its bright yellow walls, a brand new stove, and the recently added water pump at the sink. “Ray . . . well, he died . . . been a number of years now . . . . ”

“Sorry to hear that,” Joe murmured softly. “I guess ALL the kids are all up ‘n grown now . . . . ”

“Yep.” There was a wistful note in her voice. “Still, there’s the grandkids.” Abigail winced upon making mention of her grandchildren.

“How many do ya have now?” Joe asked.

Abigail removed the revolver from her apron pocket and carefully tucked it into one of the kitchen drawers. “There’s Mary Jane’s six . . . seven come December around Christmas time . . . Annabelle’s four, and Karen’s due to have HER first sometime this summer.”

“How about Gabe?” Joe asked.

“I guess that’s the biggest news,” Abigail replied, with a weary, yet proud smile. “He left last fall to attend a big university back east. It’s not the same one Adam attended, but a fine Ivy League school nonetheless. It’s a dream come true, Joe. After all the years he spent working so hard to support me and his sisters after Ray died . . . Gabe’s FINALLY got the chance now to make something wonderful of himself.”

“That’s great,” Joe said with far more enthusiasm than he felt. “Gabe has always been a very bright kid, and . . . and I’m glad he was able to go. How’s he doing?”

“Very well,” Abigail replied. “Last letter I got from him said he‘s got a real good chance of making the dean‘s list at the end of the semester.”

“I’M impressed,” Joe murmured softly, as he watched her place the ground coffee beans into the water to set for a while. “Must have cost a real pretty penny to send him all the way back east, though . . . . ”

His off hand comment drew a sharp glare from Abigail. “Joe . . . why HAVE you come here?” she demanded warily. “All of a sudden, I’ve got the feeling you didn’t come all the way out here . . . after all these years especially . . . just to inquire about my heath.”

“No,” Joe admitted. “I came out here to see Gabe.”

“What about?”

“Cara Lindsay.”

Abigail’s jaw dropped, and her face all of a sudden lost every bit of color it had. “ . . . uhhh . . . what ABOUT Cara Lindsay?” she demanded, trying her best to ignore the sudden disconcerting flutter of the proverbial butterflies in her stomach.

“Mrs. Abby, I’m gonna lay all my cards on the table . . . no beating around the bush,” Joe said very quietly. “We . . . my family and I . . . know that Cara Lindsay had a baby, and that Gabe is the father.”

“My family’s PRIVATE business is none of YOURS or anyone else’s,” Abigail said stiffly. “We’ve not broken any laws, which means I don’t have to answer any more of your questions.” Her face had turned a sickly ashen gray, and she stared over at Joe through rounded eyes, with the unblinking intensity of a reptile.

“Cara’s father bought you off, didn’t he.” Joe’s words were an accusation, not an inquiry. “THAT’S why you were able to send Gabe off to big fancy university back east.”

“Joe, it was good of you to drop by, but I think you need to go now,” Abigail said with a pointed glance in the direction of the kitchen door.

“Mrs. Abby, maybe no laws have been broken, but what about duty and obligation?” Joe demanded, his ire beginning to rise. “Cara shouldn’t be facing what she’s facing right now by herself. If Gabe IS the father of her baby, then he has a responsibility AND a moral obligation to--- ”

“ . . . to WHAT?!” Abigail angrily demanded. “To marry the girl though he’s not yet eighteen . . . to take on a man’s burden of supporting a wife and child while he’s yet still a boy . . . and worst of all, to have nothing more to look forward to in life than working a small farm, day in and day out, living in a ram-shackle shack--- ”

“This house doesn’t look ram shackle to me,” Joe observed, “and if I’m not mistaken, that’s a brand new stove.”

“Gabe doesn’t know,” Abigail said curtly, “and he’s not going to know. Ever.”

“That’s not right, Mrs. Abby. If he’s old enough to . . . to . . . well, to help get a girl in the family way--- ”

“All his life,” Abigail said through clenched teeth, her body trembling now with fear and anger, “all his LIFE, Joe . . . Gabe’s broken his back working this farm, and working odd jobs in town, too, when he could find them, to support his sisters and me. Though he was a very bright young man, who loved school, he had to leave at the age of eleven because all the work he had to do left him so bone weary, he couldn’t even eat properly most of the time. Yet, hard as he worked . . . and as much as he sacrificed, he never once complained.

“Then, one afternoon, Mister Lindsay came,” Abigail continued. “He told me about his daughter carrying Gabe’s child, then, much to my amazement, he turned right around and offered me the chance of a lifetime for Gabe. Four years at the college of his choice, as long as it WAS somewhere back east, along with the tutoring necessary for him to pass the entrance exams.”

“ . . . and as a bonus, Mister Lindsay had this place fixed up and bought you a new stove,” Joe added rancorously.

“Yes,” Abigail angrily admitted. “Yes. In return, Gabe’s not to know about the child, or see Cara ever again.”

“Mrs. Abby . . . did your son love Cara?”

“He SAID he did,” Abigail replied. “He even went so far as to say he wanted to marry her once or twice. But . . . honestly, Joe. What does a seventeen year old boy know about love?”

“A lot more than you think,” Joe responded, his face darkening with his own fast rising ire. “I was around the same age as Gabe when I fell in love with Amy Bishop. [1] I KNEW . . . almost from the moment I saw her . . . that SHE was the girl I wanted very much to marry.”

“ . . . and what did your PA think of that? Or did you even tell him?” Abigail demanded, as she favored Joe with a jaundiced glare and defiantly folded her arms across her chest.

“I have to admit that he may not have been entirely happy about the idea because of the quarrel between him and Amy’s father,” Joe replied, “but Pa . . . and my older brothers, too . . . made it real clear that my happiness meant more to them than their fight with Mister Bishop.”

“Gabe will have plenty of time to find happiness with a lovely wife and children . . . AFTER he graduates,” Abigail argued. “Joe, can’t you see that Mister Lindsay’s offer is the ONLY chance Gabe’s ever likely to have of making a better life for himself?!”

“I hope you don’t expect him to be grateful.”

“ . . . and what’s THAT supposed to mean?”

“It means when Gabe finds out that YOU decided he was never to see Cara again, and on top of that as good as sold his firstborn so he could attend a fancy college back east, he’s going to HATE you for it,” Joe said.

“I TOLD you . . . he’s NEVER going to find out,” Abigail immediately shot right back.

“Oh, yes he WILL, Mrs. Abby,” Joe insisted, “because the truth ALWAYS has a way of making itself known. It may not be today . . . tomorrow . . . next month . . . or even next year. It might not be for many years, but someday . . . Gabe WILL find out.”

“Have you said what you’ve come to say?” Abigail demanded. “Because if you have? I want you to leave. You’ve ‘way overstayed your welcome.”

Joe abruptly turned heel and strode briskly out of the house, without a word, without even turning to look back.

Abigail walked over toward the window, and remained, unmoving, her back straight as a poker, watching as Joe mounted that paint of his and rode out of her yard, back toward the road leading to town. When at long last the sound of his horse’s hooves finally died away to silence, she turned away from the window, and wept.

 

“ ‘Pa . . . looked up folks like you asked . . . son away attending school back east . . . knows nothing . . . have no way to contact,’ ” Joe silently read the brief message he had just finished writing down, then signed his name. He, then, walked up to the telegraph operator. “I’d like to send this wire to Ben Ca---!?”

“Excuse me!” A woman clad entirely in black rudely cut Joe off mid-sentence. She unceremoniously pushed the young man out of her way and stepped up to the window.

“ . . . uhhh, Ma’am? This gentleman was here FIRST,” the telegraph operator said with a touch of asperity and a nod over in Joe’s direction.

“I’M in a hurry,” the woman snapped, the scowl, perpetually etched into her dry, brittle flesh, deepening.

“ ‘S ok, Mister,” Joe said with a shrug. “I can wait . . . . ” He frowned. There was something unsettlingly familiar about that sour old woman . . . .

“Are there any messages for me?” the woman demanded. Though she spoke to the telegraph operator in a lofty, imperious tone of voice, Joe heard a note of fear there as well.

The telegraph operator exhaled an audible sigh of the longsuffering. “Just a moment, Ma’am.”

There was something very familiar about that woman. Joe turned and peered her as she stood, with back stiffly erect, gloved hands tightly clasped with fingers interlacing, and eyes glued to the telegraph operator’s back as he carefully looked through the stack of messages lying on his desk.

“Can’t you hurry it up?” the woman impatiently demanded.

“Just a moment, Ma’am,” the telegraph operator responded irritably. He turned and continued his search while she drummed her fingers on the counter. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Crawleigh . . . . ”

A cold chill shot down the entire length of Joe’s spine. Crawleigh. The only Crawleigh, with whom he and his family were acquainted, unfortunately, was the woman his sister referred to as a monster from hell, who was all set to whisk her all the way out to Ohio until he, his father, and brother had intervened.

“ . . . there’s no response to that wire you sent your cousin. Would you like to send another wire?”

“No,” the woman responded in a sullen tone of voice.

“Vivian Crawleigh,” Joe silently observed upon catching a clear glimpse of her face as she turned to leave, “in the flesh, big as life, and about a hundred times as ugly.” The haughty grimace of the perpetually righteous he remembered still remained on her face, but the look in her eyes . . . .

“ . . . like a trapped wild animal,” Joe murmured very softly.

“I’m real sorry ‘bout that,” the telegraph operator meekly apologized after the woman had left. “She sent a wire to some cousin o’ hers over in Virginia City . . . I think it was shortly after the Lindsay girl up ‘n disappeared, though, I guess you, being a stranger to town ‘n all, probably wouldn’t know anything ‘bout that.”

“Actually, I HAVE heard,” Joe said. “Is . . . is that woman the, uhhh missing girl’s mother?”

The telegraph operator immediately shook his head. “No, Sir,” he replied. “That gal’s mother died a long time ago, when she was a kid. That woman who was just here? Mister Lindsay . . . he’s the missing girl’s father . . . he hired her to look after his daughter.”

“Oh?”

“Seems the girl’s been sickly this past year or so . . . leastwise that’s what Miss Barnes says . . . . ”

“Miss Barnes?” Joe queried.

“She works over at the post office,” the telegraph operator explained. “Fount of all knowledge. That’s what my pa, God rest his soul, used to call her.”

“Fount of all knowledge?”

“Yes. Every town’s got one, I s’pose, same as just about every town’s got a drunk,” the telegraph operator said.

“Got one . . . what?” Joe asked with a puzzled frown.

“YOU know . . . one o’ those women who can’t keep her mouth shut t’ save her own life?!”

Joe laughed out loud. “Oohh yeah. I know,” he said as his mirth died away. “Where I come from? We have TWO ladies like your Miss Barnes.”

“You have my deepest sympathies, uhhh . . . Mister?”

“Just call me Joe,” the youngest Cartwright son said, extending his hand.

“My name’s Tom,” the telegraph operator said, as he shook hands with Joe. “You . . . have a message for me to send?”

“Yeah, but I need to add something . . . . ” Joe replied.

 

“Tell ya what, Pa . . . while you ‘n li’l sister here are visitin’ Cara Lindsay, I’m gonna give Virgil Jared a hand with loadin’ the supplies after Amelia gets our order t’gether,” Hoss said. “I’ll also stop by the post office ‘n go to the bank.”

“You’ll say hello to Jason for me?” Stacy asked. Jason O’Brien and his family had been friends and neighbors of the Cartwrights for many years. His father, Hugh, owned a small, but lucrative spread named Shoshone Queen in honor of his late wife, Angelina Thundercloud Woman. Over the course of the past summer, Stacy had come to care for Jason very much.

“You bet I will,” Hoss promised with a broad grin and a wink.

Ben, his middle son, and only daughter had left for town early that morning to lay in supplies and take care of a few errands, leaving the Li’l Fella in the care of Irma Fielding and Hop Sing. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out his watch. “It’s a quarter before the hour,” he told Hoss. “Why don’t we meet at the C Street Café for an early lunch before starting back?”

“Fine with ME, Pa,” Hoss replied. It was all he could do to keep from smacking his lips. “I ain’t had a hunk o’ one o’ Miss Maxine’s pies for a powerful long time.”

“Sounds good to ME, too,” Stacy added her two cents’ worth.

After his father and sister had left, Hoss turned and walked into the general store, where Amelia and her eldest daughter, Lilly Beth, were putting together the Cartwrights’ order. “Excuse me, Amelia . . . Lilly Beth?”

The two women turned. “Yes, Hoss? What can I do for ya?” Amelia asked.

“I just wanted t’ let ya know I’m gonna take a run over t’ the bank, then swing by the post office,” Hoss explained. “I’ll give Virgil ‘n Burt a hand with loadin’ the buckboard when I get back.”

“Ok, Hoss . . . Lilly Beth ‘n me’ll have your order together by the time you get through takin’ care o’ your business,” Amelia promised.

Hoss left the store, but had gone no more than a dozen steps when he heard someone, a man, frantically calling his name. Upon turning, he saw George, the wiry little guy who worked at the telegraph office running down the board walk, waving an envelope, clasped in his left hand.

“Hoss! I KNEW I’d seen you folks in town!” George wheezed upon catching up with the big man. “Gotta wire here for your pa . . . marked urgent.”

“Thanks, George,” Hoss replied. He immediately tore open the envelope with his father’s name hastily scrawled across its front and read the message:

 

Joe Cartwright  
Carson City, Nevada

Ben Cartwright  
Virginia City, Nevada

Pa,

Looked up folks like you asked. Son away attending school back east. Knows nothing. Have no way to contact. Also can confirm V Crawleigh hired to care for some one we know.

Joe

 

“Hooo-leee . . . . ”

“ . . . uuhhh . . . what was that, Hoss?” George queried with a bewildered frown. “After the holy, I mean.”

“Never you mind,” Hoss said, his face red as a beet. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a half dollar. “Here y’ are, George . . . a li’l something for your trouble.”

“Thanks, Hoss,” George said with a grin as he pocketed the tip. “Is there gonna be a reply?”

“Nope.” Hoss shook his head as he stuffed the message back into its envelope. “Leastwise not right now.”

“Ok, Hoss . . . see ya later,” George said, then turned and headed back to the telegraph office.

“Vivian Crawleigh,” Hoss muttered under his breath. “Never in a million YEARS did I think we’d see or hear from HER ever again. Pa needs t’ see this message now.” He turned, and with a grim, determined scowl on his face, made his way toward Saint Mary’s Hospital to find his pa and sister.

 

“WHAT?!” Mother Catherine shrieked.

“She’s GONE, Mother,” Sister Wilhelmina said, anxiously wringing her hands. “Miss Lindsay is gone, and . . . and so is Sister Anne!”

“Oh no,” Mother Catherine groaned. “I should’ve known . . . . ”

“Should we search the grounds?” Sister Wilhelmina asked. “They can’t have gotten TOO far . . . . ”

“Yes,” Mother Catherine replied, though a tiny voice deep within her heart insisted that Sister Anne and Cara Lindsay wouldn’t be found. Still, no harm in being thorough. “While I organize the search, Sister, I want YOU to find Father Brendan, and let him know what’s happened.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“ . . . and see to it you speak with him privately,” the mother superior added as an afterthought.

Sister Wilhelmina nodded, then turned and ran out of the mother superior’s office, nearly colliding head on with Ben Cartwright and his daughter, Stacy.

“Easy, Sister,” Ben cautioned as he reached out and placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

“I’m SO sorry, Mister Cartwright, please excuse me.” Sister Wilhelmina’s words tumbled out in a rush. Without waiting for a reply, she turned heel and fled.

“Mother Gibson?” Ben queried as he and Stacy ventured through the wide open door leading into the mother superior’s office. “Is . . . everything all right? Stacy and I wanted to see if you might allow us another visit with Miss Lindsay, but we CAN come back another time . . . . ”

“Mister Cartwright . . . and you, too, Stacy. Please, come in,” Mother Catherine invited. She closed her eyes and took a deep ragged breath in a valiant attempt to regain at least some small modicum of composure.

“What’s wrong, Mother Gibson?” Ben asked.

“Cara Lindsay’s missing,” Mother Catherine replied, “and so is Sister Anne.”

“What?!” Stacy whispered, her eyes round with shocked horror.

“Mister Cartwright, I trust you got my message yesterday?” Mother Catherine asked as her visitors seated themselves in the two chairs set facing her desk.

“About the monsignor sending a wire to the girl’s father informing him as to her whereabouts?”

Mother Catherine dolefully nodded her head, then sighed. “I should’ve KNOWN she’d do something like this . . . . ”

Ben and Stacy exchanged troubled glances. “Mother Gibson,” the former said, “I know Miss Lindsay would have been very upset upon learning that her father had been told of her whereabouts, but . . . I don’t see how you could have possibly known that she’d run away . . . especially when you take her physical condition into account.”

Mother Catherine shook her head. “I’m NOT speaking of Miss Lindsay,” she explained. “As far as I know, she knew nothing of the wire Monsignor Kramer sent. I was speaking of Sister Anne.”

“Sister Anne?!” Stacy echoed with a bewildered frown. It was beyond her comprehension that the young sister, who seemed so very set in her ways, had it within her to run away from the convent and hospital, taking her patient with her.

“As I told you both when you came day before yesterday, Sister Anne’s life was a very troubled one before she joined our community . . . with a number of similarities to Miss Lindsay’s, I might add, assuming the accusations she made against her father were true,” Mother Catherine explained.

“Pa?!”

The three glanced up, and to their surprise found Hoss standing just inside the door. Ben and Stacy immediately rose to their feet.

“Hoss? What is it?” Ben queried.

“Wire from Joe in Carson City,” Hoss replied. He crossed the room in less than the amount of time between one heart beat and the next. “George gave it to me as I was leavin’ the general store. I think you need t’ see this, Pa . . . now instead o’ later . . . . ” He placed the envelope containing the message into Ben’s outstretched hand.

Stacy moved around behind her father so that she might read over his shoulder. “Oh no!” she gasped, her eyes round with sheer horror. “Pa . . . . ”

“I see it,” Ben said somberly, feeling dreadfully sick at heart.

“Oh dear!” Mother Catherine said, as she also rose to her feet. “Mister Cartwright, I . . . hope it’s not BAD news . . . . ”

“I’m afraid it may be as far as Miss Lindsay’s concerned,” Ben said sadly. “First off, the young man who’s the father of her child’s gone back east to attend school, and according to Joe’s wire here, he apparently knows nothing about the child, but worse . . . the woman Tobias hired to look after his daughter . . . . ”

“She’s . . . she’s . . . I’m sorry, Mother Gibson . . . you, too, Pa and Hoss . . . but the woman Cara’s pa hired to look after her is a horrible monster from HELL!” Stacy declared, her face pale. She drew her hands into a pair of tight, rock hard fists to quell their trembling.

Hoss immediately slipped his arm around Stacy’s shoulders and gave her a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Easy there, Li’l Sister,” he murmured in a low, soothing tone of voice. “You KNOW that woman can’t hurt ya . . . . ”

“I know,” Stacy said, her voice shaking, as she slipped her arm around Hoss’ waist and held tight. “That’s because I’ve got you, Pa, Joe, Hop Sing . . . AND Adam . . . to protect me. Cara . . . oh, Hoss . . . if everything you said about her pa’s true, Cara had no one to protect her from . . . from the likes of Vivian Crawleigh.”

“Did you say Vivian Crawleigh?” Mother Catherine asked with a dark, angry scowl.

“Yes . . . they did,” Ben said very quietly.

“This Vivian Crawleigh . . . does she have an orphanage and foundling home out in Ohio somewhere?”

“DID, Mother Gibson,” Ben replied. “After her cousin, Mrs. Danvers, threatened Stacy with the grim prospect of being placed in that woman’s custody, I hired a good friend of my oldest son, Adam, to investigate Mrs. Crawleigh and the home she runs out in Ohio. He found enough evidence of cruelty to have that home of hers shut down, AND send her to prison.”

“How do YOU know her, Mother Gibson?” Stacy asked.

“We served as postulants and the first two years of our novitiate at a convent and charity hospital for . . . for girls like Miss Lindsay . . . who are in trouble and have no where to go . . . no one to turn to for help,” Mother Catherine replied. “She . . . I’ll be charitable, Stacy, and just say she was terribly cruel . . . then.”

“Why didn’t anyone put a stop to her cruelty?” Stacy asked, appalled by the very thought of a woman like Vivian Crawleigh being accepted into a nursing order of all things.

“I tried my best,” Mother Catherine said ruefully. “I reported her to the mistress of novices so many times, I actually lost count after the first dozen or so. Unfortunately, Sister Mercy was a very stern, unyielding woman, who, in her own way, was every bit as cruel as the woman you know as Mrs. Crawleigh.

“The very last time I went over Sister Mercy’s head to Mother Superior herself,” Mother Catherine continued. “That started me on the long journey that eventually brought me here. I heard years later that Vivian Crawleigh . . . or Sister Augustine, as she was known then, left the order a year or so later to care for a relative who had fallen ill, and that she had founded an orphanage out in Ohio. Mister Cartwright . . . . ”

“Yes, Mother Gibson?”

“This may be very uncharitable and unchristian of me, but I can’t help BUT feel a deep sense of gratitude and relief upon hearing that the man you hired to investigate Mrs. Crawleigh found enough evidence to not only shut down that home she ran, but send her to prison as well,” the mother superior said.

“Ma’am, I for one DON’T think you’re bein’ uncharitable or unchristian either for thinkin’ that,” Hoss said very quietly. “Pa?”

“Yes, Son?”

“I was wonderin’ . . . takin’ into account everything Mother Gibson here said about that Crawleigh woman, AND that Adam’s friend, Jack, found out in Ohio . . . y’ think maybe that might help keep Tobias from getting custody of Cara ‘n the Li’l Fella?”

“If there’s the slightest chance it WILL help, Mister Cartwright, I’d be more than willing to give testimony to everything I know about Vivian Crawleigh,” Mother Catherine offered.

“Thank you, Mother Gibson,” Ben murmured gratefully. “Perhaps YOUR testimony, coupled with Jack Cranston’s on what HE found out in Ohio just might keep Cara and her baby out of her father’s clutches.” He fell silent for a moment, then sighed. “I . . . guess it’s time for us to face the music,” he said quietly.

“What music, Pa?” Stacy queried with a bewildered frown.

“The ‘music’ Sheriff Coffee’s gonna make when we tell him that Cara Lindsay ‘n Sister Anne have gone missin’,” Hoss said, his voice filled with weary resignation.

“Oh no! Do we HAVE to tell Sheriff Coffee?” Stacy asked, with sinking heart.

“I’m afraid so, Young Woman . . . . ”

 

“No,” Elena di Cordova said in a very quiet, very firm tone of voice. Still confined to bed following the birth of the longed for son, who had died less than an hour after making his appearance in this world, she leaned back into the mound of pillows piled behind her and folded her arms across her chest.

“But, Elena . . . Darling . . . . ” Miguel begged.

“I said no.”

Most of the adult members of the family were present. Miguel’s older sister, Teresa Cartwright, sat in the hard backed chair on the right side of the bed, with her husband, Adam, standing directly behind her. Her mother-in-law, Dolores di Cordova, stood at the foot of the bed, wringing her hands, while her beloved husband sat perched on the very edge of the bed. Papa Eduardo was downstairs in the family room entertaining Benjy and Dio, respectively her husband’s nephew and niece.

“But . . . Darling . . . a specialist might be able to . . . to . . . . ”

“To WHAT, Miguel?” she demanded. “To fix me?! No. I think NOT.”

“Please? We won’t know . . . we CAN’T know . . . until we see him,” Miguel begged.

“How many doctors have we already seen? Twenty? Thirty, perhaps?!” She sighed very softly and shook her head. “Miguel . . . my Beloved . . . I love you. I love you so very much, and I want more than anything to give you a child, but . . . I . . . . ” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Miguel, I think we need to face the truth.”

“What truth?!” Miguel demanded, angry yet fearful.

“It’s NOT meant to be,” she half sobbed. “Miguel, we’ve been to doctor after doctor after doctor . . . seen specialist after specialist. Each time, we . . . you and me . . . we hoped . . . I prayed . . . that this time . . . surely THIS time would be different, but no. They ALL said the same thing. I can’t go through this again, getting our hopes so high, only to see them cruelly dashed.”

“But, Elena . . . Child . . . it may be this man in San Francisco knows something the others do NOT,” Dolores implored. “As Miguel said you won’t know that until you see him.”

“Mother . . . Miguel . . . perhaps this isn’t the time to make that decision,” Teresa pointed out.

“Now is as good a time as any, Teresa,” Elena said, “and I’ve decided first, I am NOT going to go through the discomfort and expense of traveling all the way to San Francisco . . . . ” she grimaced, “only to have yet another specialist tell me what all the others have.”

“B-But--- ” Miguel started to protest.

“I have also decided that I’d like to adopt a child, a baby if that’s possible,” Elena continued.

“Adopt!? Madre di Dios!” Dolores gasped as she hurriedly crossed herself. “Oh no, Elena, no, you . . . y-you CAN’T.”

“Why not?” Adam spoke up for the first time. “I believe Miguel and Elena would make wonderful parents, and there’s so many children and babies out there, orphans, some left as foundlings--- ”

“Foundlings!” Dolores moaned softly. “Babies left on the door steps of orphanages and churches, no one knows where they’ve come from, what kind of people their REAL parents were--- ”

“First of all, Dolores, IF Miguel and Elena decide to adopt a child . . . or children . . . THEY are the real parents, because they will be the ones who would raise that child, love him, teach him right from wrong, be there when that child is sick or hurting,” Adam immediately pointed out. “As for where the child may have come from or who the mother and father responsible for bringing that child into this world were . . . none of that should matter.”

“How can you SAY that?” Dolores groaned. “Adam, what if . . . dear God, what if that foundling’s father’s a murderer and the mother a . . . a . . . woman of loose morals?! Father Velasquez says ‘The sins of the father--- ’ ”

“No, Mama Dolores, don’t you see? Adam is RIGHT when he says simply bringing a child into this world does NOT make a man and woman a real father and mother,” Elena pressed. “It’s the man and woman who do all the other things Adam said who are the REAL mother and father.”

“I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit,” Dolores said, as she wagged her head slowly back and forth.

“I wonder if perhaps THIS is the reason God has seen fit to deny me the joy of having children born of my own body,” Elena argued, “so that perhaps Miguel and I might open our home . . . and our hearts . . . to a lost, abandoned child out there who needs us.”

“I STILL don’t like this,” Dolores moaned.

Teresa rose from her chair and walked over to her mother. “I think perhaps we should leave now, and let Elena get some rest,” she firmly suggested as she steered her mother toward the bedroom door.

“An excellent suggestion,” Adam immediately agreed. He, his wife, and his mother-in-law said their good-byes to Elena.

“Thank you, Adam,” she whispered very softly as he bent down to place a kiss on her forehead.

Miguel saw their visitors out, and returned a few moments later. “Elena, are you sure you want to adopt?” he asked, as he once again seated himself on the edge of her bed. “You’ve not--- ”

“Miguel, the only thing that breaks my heart more than having doctor after doctor tell us I can’t have children is learning I’m with child, only to suffer a miscarriage, or worse . . . bringing a child into the world only to see him leave it again,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please, My Love, I BEG of you . . . don’t ask me to go through it all again?”

“Elena, grant me this,” Miguel said very quietly. “When you are better, we go to San Francisco, and see the specialist.” He held up his hand upon seeing her open her mouth to protest. “Please, Love, hear me out?”

“All right,” she reluctantly agreed.

“I promise you, if this man in San Francisco says the same as the others, this will be the last time we ever see another doctor or specialist regarding whether or not you will be able to have children,” Miguel continued. “We’ll also begin doing what we need to do in order to adopt a child or a baby.”

“I’ll see the specialist in San Francisco, if as you say, this IS the last time,” Elena wearily agreed, “but I want us to begin doing what we need to do in order to adopt sooner, not later.”

“How MUCH sooner?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

 

“Now let me get all this straight!” Roy said through clenched teeth. He stood in the middle of his office, with arms folded across his chest, glaring at Mother Catherine, Ben, Hoss, and Stacy. “You’re tellin’ me this Monsignor Kramer took it on himself t’ wire Amos ‘bout Miss Lindsay bein’ in YOUR hospital, Mother Gibson . . . ‘n if THAT ain’t bad enough, y’ also tell me that gal ‘n the sister lookin’ after her . . . have gone missin’?!”

“Yes, Sheriff Coffee,” Mother Catherine replied.

“Da---uhhh, dog gone it, Ben!” Two red splotches appeared on Roy’s cheeks upon remembering that two women were present, one of them being the mother superior of her order, no less. “I KNEW I shouldn’t have let ya talk me into givin’ ya that week ‘n a half, I KNEW it. NOW, thanks t’ you, ‘n yeah . . . my own stupidity for listenin’ to ya . . . I’M in a whole world o’ trouble.”

“Roy, I’m sorry . . . . ”

“Not half so sorry as you’re GONNA be!” Roy snapped, then sighed. “All right, Mother Gibson, let’s have the particulars.” He walked over to his desk and procured pencil and paper. “First off, when did ya discover the Lindsay gal ‘n this Sister Anne were missin’?”

“This morning,” Mother Catherine replied, “about . . . I guess about ten, fifteen minutes before Mister Cartwright and Stacy arrived.”

Roy sat down behind his desk, and began jotting down the mother superior’s reply.

“They . . . must have left during the night or perhaps the dark hours of early morning,” Mother Catherine continued. “In fact, I’m reasonably certain they DID. Sister Anne asked permission to be excused from supper and Compline last night . . . said she was feeling poorly. She had plenty of time to plan things out, Sheriff.”

“You search the hospital ‘n grounds outside?”

Mother Catherine nodded her head. “Father Rutherford is overseeing that now, though frankly, I’d be surprised if they turned up there.”

“Does Sister Anne have any family or friends around? Somewhere she could go?”

“Yes,” Mother Catherine replied, “her mother lives right here in Virginia City, but they’re estranged. They’ve not spoken for five, maybe six years now, Sheriff Coffee.”

“I see,” Roy murmured softly. “So, you’re sayin’ there’s not much chance o’ her showin’ up on her mother’s doorstep?”

“Not at all, actually. I think there’s every chance in the world,” Mother Catherine said. “Sister Anne’s got no where ELSE to go.”

“All right . . . who IS Sister Anne’s mother?” Roy asked.

“Polly McPherson,” Mother Catherine replied. “I . . . believe she runs an establishment here in town called the Virginia City Social Club?”

 

Polly McPherson, madam of the very lucrative establishment known as the Virginia City Social Club, leaned against the door jamb of the guest room, watching her daughter care for the young girl tossing and turning on the bed. “How is she?”

“Burning with fever,” Sister Anne replied, fearful and growing more so by the minute.

“I think you need to send for the doc,” Polly said, as she stepped into the room.

“No.” Sister Anne was adamant. “No one can know she’s here, apart from US. NO one.”

“I don’t mean to in any way question your ability as a nurse, Maggie, but that gal needs a DOCTOR,” Polly insisted.

“If we bring the doctor, he’ll tell the sheriff she’s here,” Sister Anne argued, as she worked frantically to bathe Cara’s face and neck.

“Would you rather she died?”

“She WON’T die,” Sister Anne insisted with a calm she was very far from feeling. “Mother, please! If I can just keep her cool until her fever breaks--- ”

“I saw that leg, Maggie,” Polly said, “last night when you changed the bandages. That fever’s going to keep climbing higher and higher, unless her leg is seen to.”

Sister Anne threw the cloth she had been using to bathe Cara’s face into the near empty bowl. “I need more water,” she said in a sullen tone, as she grabbed hold of the bowl and rose.

Polly sidestepped, effectively blocking her daughter’s path. “Maggie, I’m NOT a nurse, I’ve had no training to speak of in the art of healing, but even I can see that girl’s fever is dangerously high.”

“One hour, Mother, please,” Sister Anne begged. “Just give me one hour.”

“I don’t think that gal’s GOT an hour,” Polly said bluntly. “You got until I get dressed, and THAT’S goin’ against my better judgment. If there’s no sign of improvement, I’m sending Paul for the doc.” She stood aside to allow her daughter to pass.

Sister Anne bolted for the open bedroom door, with both arms wrapped tight around the bowl. A loud pounding on the front door below froze both women in their tracks.

“Probably a client,” Polly said grimly, as she pulled the flaps of her silk robe together and securely tied the sash. “You take the backstairs down to the kitchen.”

Paul Klein, meanwhile, tossed aside his aunt’s latest copy of the Territorial Enterprise, and ran to answer the door. Upon throwing it open, he was shocked and heartily dismayed to find Sheriff Coffee, the Cartwrights, and Mother Gibson standing on the door step outside.

“Paul?!” Mother Catherine exclaimed with a perplexed frown. “What are YOU doing HERE?”

“If y’ don’t mind, Mother Gibson, I’LL ask t’ questions,” Roy said curtly. He, then, returned his attention to the chagrinned young man standing framed in the open door. “Son, I’d like a word with Miz McPherson. She in?”

“I, uhhh . . . I dunno, I . . . . ” Paul swallowed nervously.

“Paul, YOU g’won out to the kitchen and help Maggie,” Polly ordered, as she slowly descended the stairs.

“Y-Yes, Ma’am,” Paul murmured softly, before turning tail and running in the direction of the kitchen with shoulders hunched, and head hung.

“Gentlemen . . . Ladies . . . please come in,” Polly invited in a cool, but polite tone. She stood aside, allowing her unexpected visitors to enter.

Sheriff Coffee fell in step behind the lady of the house. Mother Gibson followed behind the sheriff, while the Cartwrights brought up the rear. Polly led her visitors to the small, formal parlor at the back of the house and invited them to sit. She, herself, took up position before the fireplace, .

“What can I do for you, Sheriff Coffee?” Polly asked.

“We’re lookin’ for a very sick young lady ‘n her nurse, one o’ the sisters who works at Saint Mary’s Hospital,” Roy replied.

“A sick young lady and a nun,” Polly echoed, with a wry smile. “What makes you think they’re HERE?”

“Because the nurse we’re looking for is Sister Anne,” Mother Gibson immediately spoke up. “Your daughter, Mrs. McPherson.”

“ . . . and where in the ever lovin’ world didja get the idea she’d show up HERE of all places?” Polly demanded in a tone of voice insultingly condescending.

“Because she has no where ELSE to go,” Mother Gibson quietly replied.

“Mrs. McPherson, the young lady in the company of Sister Anne has a leg that’s badly infected,” Ben pleaded. “If she’s not returned to the hospital, where that leg can be properly cared for . . . she might die.”

“If that young lady dies under your roof, Ma’am, Sister Anne will more ‘n likely wind up bein’ charged with manslaughter . . . ‘n YOU as an accessory,” Roy warned.

Polly sighed. “They’re here,” she reluctantly confessed. “The young lady you speak of IS upstairs . . . and she’s in a very bad way. I was about to send Paul for the doctor.”

“Stacy, would YOU mind fetching Doctor Martin?” Ben asked. “I’d also appreciate it if you’d remain at the Martins until your brother and I come for you.”

“But--- ”

“No arguments, Young Woman,” Ben said firmly in a tone of voice that brooked no further argument.

“Yes, Sir,” Stacy replied with a sigh.

“Mrs. McPherson, if you’d be so kind as to tell me where Sister Anne and her patient are, I’d be more than happy to lend a hand in caring for the girl until the doctor comes,” Mother Catherine offered, after Stacy had left.

“Upstairs,” Polly replied. “Guest room’s at the end of the hall, on the right.”

“Thank you,” Mother Catherine said rising.

“I WAS telling the truth when I said I was about to sent for the doc,” Polly said, very much on the defensive.

“Y’ should’ve sent f’r ME when Sister Anne showed up on your doorstep with Cara Lindsay,” Roy said sternly. “Why didn’t ya?”

“The unholy hour of the morning they showed up for one thing,” Polly replied, “and for another I happen to believe Maggie’s story about Miss Lindsay’s father wanting to sell her baby.” She turned and looked Ben square in the face. “You believe it, too, Mister Cartwright,” she half observed, half accused. “I can see it in your face.”

“To be perfectly honest, Mrs. McPherson, I’m not sure whether I believe Miss Lindsay’s father really intends to sell her baby to the highest bidder or not,” Ben said firmly. “I AM reasonably certain, however, that Miss Lindsay believes her accusations are true, and as Roy here said to me yesterday, I’M of the mind that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

“ . . . and what stake do YOU have in this, Mister Cartwright . . . if you don’t mind me asking?” Polly demanded.

“My family and I want to help Miss Lindsay . . . if she’s of a mind to let us,” Ben replied. That was all he was prepared to say at that moment.

“Miz McPherson, I couldn’t help but notice y’ sounded real sure o’ yourself just now when ya said y’ believe Miss Lindsay’s story,” Roy quietly observed. “Most, includin’ me, are shocked, ‘n at best don’t honestly know WHAT t’ believe.”

“Sheriff Coffee, I know for fact Mister Lindsay has been serving as a baby broker to the very rich in San Francisco . . . oohh, I’d say for the better part of the last five . . . maybe six years now at the very least,” Polly said grimly.

Roy frowned. “Don’t tell me the ladies workin’ f’r YOU have . . . . ”

“No, Sheriff Coffee,” Polly shook her head. “Even at the best of times . . . under the very best of circumstances, brokering with one of MY girls, who finds herself in the family way, is a very chancy business. I do all I can to protect my girls of course, but I’m afraid even my best efforts amount to being little more than doing nothing at all. I trust we ALL understand each other?”

“I do,” Roy snapped.

Hoss and Ben merely nodded.

“I DID have occasion to make use of Mister Lindsay’s services once, however,” Polly continued in a very quiet, very subdued tone of voice.

“I thought y’ just got through sayin’ y’ never used him when one o’ the ladies workin’ for ya found herself in the family way,” Hoss said with a bewildered frown.

“I haven’t,” Polly affirmed. “No . . . the mother-to-be was NOT one of my working girls . . . she was my daughter.”

“Sister Anne?!” Ben queried, astonished and shocked.

Polly nodded. “Yes, Mister Cartwright. Sister Anne. Her given name is Maggie.” She sighed. “She was the one thing in my life untouched by what I’ve become,” she sadly continued, “or so I thought. Maggie’s father . . . . ” A wistful half smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “A charmer, that one, with all his pretty words, and his poetry. He was the only ’decent’ man who ever talked to me about marriage.”

“What . . . happened to him, Miz McPherson?” Hoss ventured.

“Hoss!” Ben admonished. “I don’t think that’s--- ”

Polly held up her hand. “ ‘S ok, Mister Cartwright. Lord above knows I‘m not welcome in this town‘s many circles of ‘polite‘ society,” she said with a touch of rancor. “Never have been . . . never will be. My telling the truth after all these years won’t change anything for me, but if it can help my daughter . . . . ” She looked over at Roy Coffee expectantly.

“T’ be up front ‘n honest, Ma’am, what happens t’ Sister Anne . . . Maggie . . . is gonna be up t’ a jury of her peers,” Roy said. “Right now, she stands charged o’ kidnappin’ Miss Lindsay . . . a minor in t’ eyes o’ the law, ‘n recklessly puttin’ her life in danger. If Miss Lindsay dies, your daughter could be lookin’ at a manslaughter charge.”

“Though I can’t condone what Maggie‘s done, after talking with Miss Lindsay myself, I can understand why she took the action she did,” Ben anxiously pressed. “Your daughter can’t stop Tobias Lindsay from claiming custody of his daughter and her baby, but maybe . . . just maybe . . . YOU can.”

“ . . . and takin’ into account the fact your daughter don’t have any kind o’ criminal record prior t’ all this, if she IS found guilty by her peers in a court o’ law, anything you hafta say might incline a judge t’ be lenient when it comes t’ handin’ down a sentence,” Roy added.

Polly sighed, and turned toward the window in her downstairs parlor that looked out upon a back alley strewn with garbage. “I guess it all boils down to what it says in The Good Book about the sins of the father being visited upon the son,” she began. “Only in THIS instance, it’s the sins of the mother being visited upon the daughter. Godfrey McPherson, Maggie’s father, walked out on me . . . on US . . . soon after I told him I was with our child. He never even said goodbye. I woke up one morning, and he was gone. I found out later he was married to a very wealthy woman and, though he tended to stray . . . a lot . . . sooner or later, he ALWAYS went back home to Mama and her money.

“I had Maggie in a charity hospital in St. Louis,” Polly continued. “Most women in my position would’ve let the baby go for adoption, but I couldn’t. I LOVED her father, and God help me, I still do to this day. I figured if I couldn’t have the man, I’d take consolation in having his child. The minute I was back on my feet, Maggie and I left St. Louis, she with a handful of baby things given us by the folks running the charity hospital and me with little more than the clothes on my back and a stolen name.”

“A stolen name?!” Hoss echoed with a puzzled frown. “What do you mean by that?”

“I listed Godfrey as Maggie’s father on her birth certificate, and, though I never married him, I, nonetheless, claimed to be his widow,” Polly replied. “I took any job that was offered me . . . emptying bedpans in a hospital . . . waiting tables . . . cleaning houses . . . but the pay was . . . I’ll be charitable and just say it wasn’t near enough to support me AND Maggie. I . . . felt I had NO choice but to . . . to offer the only commodity I had to offer . . . namely myself.

“By the time I arrived here in Virginia City, I had enough put by to pay rent on a small house on D Street and set out my shingle as it were,” she continued. “It wasn’t easy . . . in fact, at times it was damned near impossible, but I shielded Maggie as best I could from my, shall we say less than sterling reputation? When she turned six, I sent her to a good boarding school out in San Francisco, where very few, if any, had even heard about Polly McPherson and the burgeoning Virginia City Social Club. Summers and school holidays were spent with my older sister and HER family.”

“Paul Klein’s mother?” Ben asked.

Polly nodded. “I couldn’t visit often, but I wrote . . . sent birthday and Christmas presents . . . supported her financially, and as my business began to flourish, I was able to help out my sister and her family a little, too. Maggie was all set to leave for a very fine finishing school back east, when she became involved with a young man who ended up leaving HER in the family way.”

“Was HE married, too, like Sist--- like . . . Maggie’s pa?” Roy asked.

“No. He was ENGAGED to be married,” Polly replied. “The planned wedding, in MY humble opinion, amounted to being more of a business venture, one that united new money and impoverished nobility together in Holy Matrimony.”

“Is THAT when you went t’ Tobias Lindsay?” Roy asked.

“Actually? Mister Lindsay came to ME, Sheriff,” Polly replied, “with an offer from the boy’s father of twenty thousand dollars in gold, in return for my letting Maggie’s baby go for adoption.”

“ . . . ‘n the both of ya agreed t’ this?” Roy asked.

“I did,” Polly said bitterly. “Maggie, bless her heart, wanted to keep that baby, more than just about anything. She loved the father, she claimed, and though she never came right out and said so, I think she entertained fanciful notions about that boy coming back to claim her and the child. I, at least, had no such illusions about Godfrey.”

“So YOU in effect SOLD your own grandchild for twenty thousand in gold?” Roy demanded, shocked and appalled.

“Yes, I did, Sheriff Coffee,” Polly shot right back, defiant and angry, yet very much on the defensive, “and if I had it to do over, I’d do the exact same thing.” She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten. “Mister Lindsay assured me that Maggie’s baby would be placed in a good home . . . where she would have a mother and a father . . . she would be well educated, and would lack for nothing,” she continued, with eyes still closed and jaw tightly clenched. “As for the twenty thousand in gold . . . that was for Maggie and me to put as much distance as we possibly could between us and Virginia City, had have something to live on until I received the money from the sale of my assets here.

“Maggie, though . . . . ” Polly chuckled mirthlessly, and shook her head. “When she found out about the devil’s bargain I struck with Mister Lindsay, she swore . . . on the grave of the father I’d for so many years told her was dead . . . that she wanted nothing more to do with me. I expected she’d be angry, but she was only sixteen years old. I’m not so stupid as to think she’d get over it . . . a woman NEVER truly gets over putting a child up for adoption, even if it IS in the best interests of that child. But I honest and truly believed she’d at some point pull herself together and move on, even if she never forgave me for what I’d done.”

“She left ya?” Hoss gently asked.

Polly nodded. “For five years, I heard nothing from her or about her,” she continued, her voice tremulous. “Then, a year . . . maybe a year and a half ago, I was a patient in the convent hospital suffering from female troubles. The n-nurse who looked after me . . . . ”

“Sister Anne?” Ben asked.

“Yes.”

“Mrs. McPherson, are you willing to testify to all this in a court of law?” Ben asked.

“Yes, Mister Cartwright, I am . . . but on one condition.”

“ . . . and that is?”

“I won’t name the man who sired my daughter’s baby,” Polly said firmly. “My silence was also part of the agreement and I mean to honor it.”

“Miz McPherson, you might be able t’ help your daughter if she’s found guilty ‘n the judge hearin’ the case happens t’ be inclined toward leniency,” Roy said candidly, “but, I’m afraid your testimony alone ain’t gonna be enough t’ keep Miss Lindsay ’n her baby outta Tobias’ hands. We need evidence . . . good, solid, concrete evidence that shows him t’ be guilty o’ what amounts t‘ peddlin‘ human flesh. Otherwise, it comes down t’ being his word against yours.”

“Dadburnit it, Roy . . . what’s it gonna take?!” Hoss demanded, outraged at the prospect of handing Cara Lindsay and The Li’l Fella back at the Ponderosa over to the likes of Tobias Lindsay.

“It’s gonna take a lot more ‘n we got right now,” Roy growled back.

“I got a wire from Joe earlier,” Ben said slowly. He reached into the pocket of his shirt and drew out a folded piece of paper. “Here. Read for yourself.”

Roy took the paper from Ben’s hand, unfolded it, and silently read the message over a couple of times. “This Miz Crawleigh Joe mentions . . . she that cousin o’ Miz Danvers? The one you ‘n that Pinkerton friend o’ Adam’s put outta business?”

“Yes, Roy, she is,” Ben replied. “Adam’s friend found enough evidence of cruelty against that woman to close down that orphanage and foundling home of hers for good.”

“Seems t’ ME, Jack found enough t’ lock her up for the next ten years or so, too,” Hoss grimly added his two cents worth. “I, for one, would be real interested in knowin’ why she’s runnin’ loose, free as a bird.”

“I’m gonna look into that, Hoss,” Roy said, “believe you me! Ben?”

“Yes, Roy?”

“I need t’ know more about that investigation that friend o’ Adam’s conducted at that orphanage ’n foundling home Miz Crawleigh ran out in Ohio,” Roy said.

“I have a copy of Jack’s report at home, locked up in my safe,” Ben replied.

“Good. I’ll be out soon as I can t’ look it over,” Roy said. “Takin’ Miz Crawleigh’s past history into account, if . . . ’n it’s a real big if . . . we can prove Tobias knew about that woman’s past when he hired her t’ look after his daughter, then y’ just might be able t’ show him t’ be an unfit father.”

 

Mother Catherine, meanwhile, stood just outside the open door to the guest room, and for a moment watched Sister Anne care for the young girl, now tossing and turning amid crumpled, sweat soaked bed linens. “What can I do to help?” the mother superior asked as she stepped into the room.

Sister Anne gasped. “M-Mother S-Superior! H-How . . . when did you---?!” she stammered, nearly dropping the cloth she had been using to bathe Cara’s face and neck. “I’d thought . . . I’d HOPED--- ”

“ . . . this would be the very last place anyone would think of looking for you?” Mother Catherine queried with eyebrow slightly upraised.

Sister Anne nodded.

“You were right,” Mother Catherine said quietly, as she walked over and took her place on the other side of the bed. “No one WOULD think to look for you here . . . unless they realized you had no place ELSE to go.”

“Gabe . . . . ” Cara moaned, her voice hoarse. “No . . . y-you can’t . . . you can’t stay . . . danger . . . if . . . if m-my father finds you . . . . ”

“She’s been talking to Gabe since daybreak yesterday morning,” Sister Anne confessed in a very small, very frightened voice.

“We’ve sent for the doctor,” Mother Catherine said as she drew up a chair close to the bed and sat down.

“W-We?” Sister Anne queried with fast sinking heart. “Oh Dear Lord, n-not . . . not Monsignor Kramer . . . . ”

Mother Catherine shook her head. “By this time, I‘m sure the ‘good‘ monsignor knows you and Miss Lindsay are missing . . . no keeping that from him, I‘m afraid, but he doesn‘t know where you are.”

“Then who---?”

“The Cartwrights,” Mother Catherine replied, as she gently eased the bedclothes away from Cara’s bad leg, “ . . . AND Sheriff Coffee.”

Sister Anne swallowed nervously. “What of Miss Lindsay’s father?”

“I was told that he was in San Francisco on business when he finally received word of his daughter’s disappearance a couple of days ago,” Mother Catherine replied. “Assuming he left immediately, he won’t reach Carson City for another five days at the very least. “Sister Anne?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“When was the last time you changed Miss Lindsay’s bandages?”

“I don’t know,” Sister Anne replied, dolefully wagging her head back and forth. “Three . . . maybe four hours ago . . . I‘ve been concentrating on trying to bring down her fever, I . . . I guess I forgot about her bandages . . . . ”

“I’ll see to it,” the mother superior said, rising. “Where might I find hot water and clean bandages?”

“There’s plenty of hot water on the stove in the kitchen downstairs, and clean bandages in the armoire behind me,” Sister Anne replied, in the tone of one utterly defeated, and resigned to whatever consequence was about to befall her.

Mother Catherine nodded, then started for the door.

“Mother?”

She paused. “Yes, Child?”

“I’m truly sorry for any trouble I’ve brought to you and . . . and to our order,” Sister Anne said, “but even so . . . if I had it to do over? I’d have done EXACTLY the same.” This last was spoken with a touch of defiance.

“I know, Sister.”

A soft, but insistent knock against the door jamb drew the attention of the two women from their conversation. “Yes? Who is it?” the mother superior called out.

Doctor Paul Martin threw the door open and strode briskly into the room. “Mother Gibson, I’d be much obliged if you’d stay and assist,” he said, taking charge of the situation.

“Of course,” Mother Catherine immediately assented.

“Doctor, what ab---!?”

Paul turned and glared at Sister Anne. “I think it would be best if YOU waited downstairs,” he said curtly. “Mother Gibson?”

“Yes, Doctor Martin?”

“We’re going to need boiling water, and lots of it.”

“It’s already on the stove,” Mother Catherine replied. “I’ll go fetch some.”

“Thank you,” Paul said grimly. “While you’re downstairs, would you please ask Hoss to remain in case we have need if him?” His eyes moved to Cara’s badly infected leg and lingered.

“I will, Doctor,” Mother Catherine promised . . . .

 

Sister Anne leapt to her feet the instant her sharp ears picked up the soft, rhythmic slapping of feet descending the stairs in the narrow corridor just outside Polly McPherson’s formal parlor. She bolted from the room, nearly colliding head on with Mother Catherine as she moved from the last step into the floor.

Hoss, Ben, and Roy, also rose, one at a time, and slowly made their way toward the door. Paul Klein remained on the settee, his heart racing, and eyes glued to the backs of the three older men crowding the threshold.

“Mother!” Sister Anne cried out in anguish. She reached out and seized hold of Mother Catherine’s forearm with a painful, vice like grip. “Mother, please . . . how IS she?”

“I’m afraid Miss Lindsay’s in a very bad way, Child,” the mother superior replied. She, then, raised her head, making eye contact with Hoss, who stood at the open door to the parlor behind his father and the sheriff. “Mister Cartwright . . . . ”

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“Doctor Martin asked that you stay . . . in case he’s . . . he’s forced to amputate.”

“A-Amputate?!” Sister Anne gasped, as she released her hold on the mother superior. She sank down onto the next to last step, wagging her head back and forth very slowly. “Dear God in Heaven . . . WHAT have I done?” she moaned.

“Your actions haven’t HELPED Miss Lindsay,” Mother Catherine said, quiet and firm, yet not without a measure of kindness, “but, in all likelihood, it’s MY opinion we’d be facing this eventuality anyway.”

“M-Mother Gibson . . . you tell Doc Martin I’ll be right here, if ‘n when he needs me,” Hoss said, feeling dizzy and sick to his stomach.

“I’ll tell him,” Mother Catherine promised. She, then, turned, and quickly made her way down the short length of corridor to the kitchen.

Roy Coffee silently walked over to Sister Anne, who remained seated on the step, with arms wrapped tight about her knees, staring off into space through eyes, round and unblinking. “Maggie McPherson, you’re under arrest,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder, “you ’n Paul Klein both.”

“No!” Sister Anne, Maggie, protested. “Not PAUL! He had no idea I . . . well, that I w-was taking Miss Lindsay from the hospital without permission.”

“I had a pretty good idea, Cousin . . . . ”

Roy turned, and much to his surprise, found Paul Klein standing in their midst.

“ . . . this business of sneaking the buckboard outta the rectory stable ‘n meeting YOU outside the hospital in the dead o’ night . . . you bringing Miss Lindsay HERE of all places . . . . ” Paul continued, “well, I’ll put it THIS way . . . it doesn’t take a genius to put two ‘n two together ‘n come up with four.”

“Paul no!” Sister Anne begged, with tears streaming down her face. “Please, I don’t want YOU getting into trouble for . . . well, f-for something I practically had to twist your arm to--- ”

“Yeah . . . you twisted my arm, but still ‘n all I went along with ya,” Paul said.

“Why?” Roy very quietly asked. “If you knew what Sister Anne here was up to, and you’d like as not end up in hot water ‘way in over your head if ya got caught . . . why’d you decide t’ go along with this crazy scheme SHE . . . . ” he inclined his head towards the young nun, still seated on the next to last step, wringing her hands, “ . . . cooked up?”

“I don’t get out much, Sheriff Coffee, but I’ve heard bits ‘n pieces about that gal’s father,” Paul said grimly.

“Your intentions were good, ‘n . . . maybe your hearts were in the right place ‘n all, but I’m still gonna hafta arrest ya for kidnappin’ ‘n at this point, endangerin’ Miss Lindsay’s life by removing’ her from the hospital,” Roy said with a heavy heart. “If Miss Lindsay DIES . . . the both of ya could be lookin’ at a possible charge o’ manslaughter in addition t’ everything else.” He paused. “Do you both understand that?”

“I understand, Sheriff,” Sister Anne replied, her voice a dead monotone.

Paul nodded. “A-Are you taking Ma---uhhh, Sister Anne ‘n me to jail right now?” he asked.

“Yes, Son,” Roy replied. “The doc ‘n mother superior have everything in hand upstairs, so there’s no reason for either one of ya to remain here.”

“Sister Anne . . . Paul . . . I’ll let you know about Miss Lindsay as soon as I hear something,” Ben promised.

“Thank you, Mister Cartwright,” Paul murmured, then turned and gallantly helped his cousin to her feet.

 

 _Cara walked arm-in-arm with Gabe through a dream garden suffused with a gentle white light that seemed to emanate from every leaf, every flower petal, every blade of grass. For the first time since the untimely death of her mother, she felt happy . . . honestly and truly happy . . . and at peace._

 _“Gabe, if my father comes and finds you---”_

 _“He won’t,” Gabe said with a quiet confidence filled with all the strength of the mightiest fortress . . . ._

 _. . . and at long last, Cara believed him. “Gabe?”_

 _“Yes, Cara?”_

 _“Where are we going?”_

 _“There‘s someone waiting for you,” Gabe replied._

 _“There is?” Cara queried with a puzzled frown. “Who?”_

 _“Someone who loves you every bit as much as I do.”_

 _Somewhere in the far distance, she heard another take a deep ragged breath, hold, then exhale; and in that other world so very far away . . . . ___

“Mama,” a young child-woman by the name of Cara Lindsay whispered, then breathed her last.

“She’s gone,” Paul Martin murmured softly, his heart heavy.

Mother Catherine traced a small cross on the dead girl’s forehead, and murmured a quick prayer. “May you find rest, peace, and happiness in the arms of our Lord.”

“Amen,” Paul responded. He, then, gently pulled the sheet up over Cara’s head. “I . . . wish I could have done more.”

“You did everything you could, Doctor,” Mother Catherine said very quietly. “Looking at that poor child’s leg . . . to be brutally frank, I don’t honestly think it would have mattered if Sister Anne HADN’T removed Miss Lindsay from the hospital.”

“I’m NOT talking about now, Mother Gibson,” the doctor said bitterly, “I’m talking about six years ago, right after that poor child’s mother died.”

 

Hoss swallowed nervously, then rose to his feet the minute he saw Paul Martin emerge from the dark shadows of the narrow hallway, and step across the threshold into the parlor. “Doc,” he ventured his face pale, and voice filled with grim resignation. “I . . . I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be for . . . well, for somethin’ like this.”

“ ‘S ok, Hoss,” the doctor said, his voice barely audible. “Miss Lindsay . . . well, it seems she won’t be needing that amputation after all . . . . ”

Ben leapt to his feet, nearly giddy with relief, believing that Paul Martin had at the eleventh hour found a miracle lying somewhere at the bottom of that black bag of his. “Paul . . . thank the Lord, that’s wonderful--- ” His words of gratitude abruptly ended in a soft, anguished moan when the sawbones’ lifted his head. “No,” he murmured softly upon catching a good hard look at Paul Martin’s pale, stricken face. “Oh no, Dear God, no . . . . ”

“Doc, does that mean that M-Maggie . . . I m-mean Sister Anne’s going to be charged with . . . with murder?” Polly demanded, her face white as a sheet.

“Now mind, Mrs. McPherson . . . your daughter acted irresponsibly when she took Miss Lindsay from the hospital, and to that end, she IS guilty of abducting a young lady, not yet the age of majority . . . . ”

 

“ . . . but, it’s my opinion as a doctor that the actions of Sister Anne and Paul Klein did NOT cause her death,” Paul Martin grimly told the sheriff an hour after pronouncing Cara Lindsay dead.

The lawman and doctor stood before the fireplace in Polly McPherson’s parlor facing each other with backs almost painfully erect, arms hanging loosely at their sides, and faces set with the same stubborn determination as a pair of fighters in a ring getting ready to square off. Polly McPherson and Mother Gibson sat together on the ornate French Provincial settee, with Ben and Hoss standing directly behind them.

“So . . . YOU’RE sayin’ had Sister Anne ‘n Paul Klein NOT taken Miss Lindsay from the hospital . . . that she’d have died anyhow?” Roy asked.

“That‘s EXACTLY what I‘m saying,” Paul replied with a curt nod of his head for emphasis. “Now, don’t get me wrong, Roy . . . Sister Anne’s actions . . . and Paul Klein’s as well . . . WERE ill considered and reckless, but in my opinion did NOT cause Miss Lindsay’s death. If ANYONE’S directly responsible, it’s the individual who inflicted that burn on her leg, and I‘m willing to testify to that in a court of law if necessary.”

“I’m gonna need a report after you’ve done your post mortem exam, Doc,” Sheriff Coffee said.

“You’ll have it before noon today,” Paul vowed.

“Sheriff?” Mother Catherine ventured.

“Yes, Ma’am?”

“Now that Miss Lindsay is no longer with us . . . what happens to her baby?”

“Since Tobias is his daughter‘s next o‘ kin, I‘m legally bound t‘ turn that baby over to him when he comes t’ claim his grandson,” Roy replied.

“WHAT?!” Ben exclaimed, angry and outraged at the very thought. “Roy, no! You can’t!”

“Ben, I don’t like it any more ‘n YOU,” Roy shot right back, his voice rising, “but unless you can prove Tobias t’ be unfit, the law I’VE sworn t’ uphold ‘n defend says that’s exactly what I gotta do.”

 

“Joe? Joe Cartwright?”

The youngest of Ben’s sons glanced up sharply upon hearing his name. He had spent the better part of the last hour seated at one of the tables in the back of the Silver Morgan Saloon in Carson City, gently nursing a mug of beer with a heavy heart. “Jack Cranston . . . right?” he queried as he rose and politely offered his hand.

“That’s right,” Jack replied, as he firmly took Joe’s proffered hand. He grinned. “I’m pleasantly surprised you remembered after all these years. Last time I saw YOU . . . well, you couldn’t have been any older than your young niece.”

“You’re not the kind of guy a starry eyed li’l kid’s likely to forget,” Joe said. He invited Jack to sit with a gesture toward the unoccupied chair to his left. “I got a wire from Pa saying you were headed this way. I didn’t figure on you getting here so quickly, though.”

“I took a freight wagon out of Sacramento,” Jack explained, as he and Joe sat down. “Fewer stops that way, and when we DID stop, it was just long enough to change horses.”

“A freight wagon?!” Joe echoed, with a chortle. “Big guy like you? I’ll bet THAT cost a pretty penny . . . . ”

“ . . . chump change for Pinkerton clients who have engaged my services,” Jack returned with a wry smile.

“Pa also said in his wire that you’re willing to share information you’ve already dug up on Tobias Lindsay,” Joe said as they sat down.

“As long as it doesn’t compromise the identity of my clients,” Jack said, before turning and signaling to one of the saloon girls circulating among the tables. “You mind me asking what your father’s interest in Tobias Lindsay is?”

“It’s a long story, Jack, and given my druthers, I’m thinking I’d like to go someplace where we can talk privately,” Joe said, casting a pointed glance over toward a half dozen cowhands now taking their seats at a nearby round table. “I’m checked in at the Comstock Hotel across the street. We could go to my room if you’d like . . . . ”

Jack flashed Joe a roguish grin. “I’m checked in at the Comstock Hotel, too . . . in the presidential suite,” he said, rising.

“The presidential suite?!” Joe echoed incredulously, as he also rose to his feet. “You’re joking, right?”

“Nope. I’m dead serious.”

Joe chuckled softly and shook his head. “Your clients picking up the tab for this, too?”

“Yep,” Jack replied. “Have you eaten yet?”

Joe shook his head. “I was just about to g’won over to the restaurant at the Comstock Hotel when I got this wire from Pa.” He reached up and patted overtop the inside pocket of his green jacket. “After I read it . . . well, whatever appetite I had is completely gone.”

“I . . . hope it wasn’t bad news . . . . ”

“No, leastwise not as far as my family‘s concerned,” Joe hastened to reassure, “but what Pa had to say DOES have to do with Tobias Lindsay.”

“Let’s g’won back to my room,” Jack suggested. “We can have the hotel’s room service send us up a couple of nice juicy steaks and a good bottle of whiskey to wash ’em down.”

“Sounds good to me,” Joe replied . . . .

 

Upon reaching Jack’s room at the Comstock Hotel, Joe shared everything he knew, beginning with the morning his pa and big brother found the baby on their doorstep and concluding with everything he had learned from Abigail Jarvis, seeing Vivian Crawleigh at the telegraph office, and the wire he’d not long ago received from Ben informing him of Cara Lindsay’s passing.

Jack silently reflected upon everything Joe had just told him, as he cut what remained of the enormous slab of tender prime rib steak, courtesy of the Comstock Hotel’s room service, into bite sized pieces. “She actually told your father and sister that Mister Lindsay . . . her father . . . wants to sell her baby . . . in so many words?” he finally ventured.

Joe slowly nodded his head. “That’s what Pa said.”

“That’s . . . quite an accusation for a young lady to make against her own father. Does your pa believe her?”

“Pa’s not sure WHAT to believe,” Joe replied, as he stabbed the last piece of steak from the plate with his fork, “but he IS of the mind that Miss Lindsay believed her allegations were true.”

Jack took hold of the whiskey bottle sitting on the table between them and held it up. “More whiskey?” he asked.

“Yeah, but not much . . . just half a glass maybe . . . . ”

“Say when.” Jack picked up Joe’s glass and began to pour.

“That‘s enough,” Joe said when the glass was about a third of the way full.

“The thought of a man doing what amounts to selling his own flesh and blood to the highest bidder ’s enough to boggle the mind,” Jack mused, as he poured the remainder of the whiskey into his own glass.

“You can say that again,” Joe wholeheartedly agreed before raising the glass in hand to his lips and downing its contents in a single gulp.

“Even so, I’M actually inclined to agree completely with the late Miss Lindsay.”

“Really?” Joe queried, mildly surprised.

Jack nodded.

“Have you by chance unearthed proof that Mister Lindsay plans to sell his daughter‘s baby?” Joe asked hopefully.

“Nope,” Jack replied with a doleful sigh. “All I have is a real strong gut feeling, which, unfortunately, won’t hold up in a court of law.”

“So, how, exactly, do your clients figure into all this?”

“As I told Adam, they’re a couple of wealthy San Francisco socialites, who, for whatever reason can’t have children of their own,” Jack explained. “About six . . . maybe seven years ago now, they adopted a baby girl through Tobias Lindsay, who died just before her second birthday of what‘s commonly known as bad blood.” [2]

Joe‘s jaw dropped. “What?!” he exclaimed, incredulous. “H-How in the world could a . . . an innocent baby---?”

“Her mother would’ve passed the illness on to her either in the womb or at birth,” Jack replied with a touch of rancor. “My clients want to sue Mister Lindsay for delivering damaged goods. THEIR words, Joe, not mine.”

“ . . . and they hired YOU to find evidence to support their case?” Joe asked, appalled at the thought of a baby being looked upon as nothing more than a marketable commodity.

“THEY hired the Pinkerton Agency. I got the assignment,” Jack replied.

“You said they adopted this baby six or seven years ago? If they were going to sue Mister Lindsay . . . why did they wait so long?”

“I wonder about that myself,” Jack admitted, then shrugged, “but mine is not to question why. I saw something very interesting among the adoption papers in my clients’ possession, however . . . . ”

“Oh?” Joe queried. “And what might THAT be?”

“A copy of their baby’s birth certificate.”

“How in the world did they get hold of THAT?” Joe demanded. “Aren’t those records always sealed by court order?”

“Yes,” Jack said, “but . . . well, let me put it this way. If money talks, the clients I’m working for have enough to shout from the roof tops loud enough to be heard in the farthest reaches of Timbuktu.”

“So . . . do the parents turn out to be anyone I know?” Joe asked.

That wry, sardonic tone of voice and eyebrow slightly upraised, so reminiscent of one Adam Stoddard Cartwright, brought a smile to Jack’s face. “Well, that all depends, Joe. Are you acquainted with a man by the name of ‘Father Unknown’?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Joe replied with a chuckle. He quickly sobered. “No surprise there,” he sardonically observed. “A wealthy man, I’ll bet, with a wife who doesn’t understand him and a whole passel of kids.”

“ . . . OR a young man born into a nouveau riche family, whose social climbing parents seek to merge their financial assets to a family of nobility living in genteel poverty that would otherwise be looking down their long, aristocratic noses at them,” Jack added.

“Sounds to me more like a business merger than a marriage,” Joe said.

“That’s about the size of it,” Jack agreed.

“So, who’s the mother?” Joe asked. “Or is SHE listed as unknown, too?”

“The MOTHER of the baby my clients adopted was a young girl just out of school, who was living with relatives in San Francisco at the time,” Jack replied. “She was about to leave for a prestigious finishing academy for young ladies back east somewhere when her delicate condition was discovered. Her name is Margaret McPherson, and I recently found out she’s living in YOUR neck of the woods, Joe.”

“Virginia City?”

Jack nodded.

“The only McPherson in Virginia City that I know of is Polly McPherson,” Joe said. “She’s the madam of the Virginia City Social Club, and, too old, I think to be the mother of a child who‘d be around six or seven years old now, if she were still alive.”

“Ah, but this Polly McPherson you just mentioned is plenty old enough to be that child’s grandmother,” Jack pointed out.

Joe frowned. “Her grandmother?!” he echoed, bemused. “Well doesn’t that beat all. I was under the impression Mrs. McPherson was left widowed shortly after she was married and never had any children.”

“Chances are most of the good people of Virginia City were never acquainted with Margaret McPherson or they’ve forgotten all about her because her mother packed her off to a posh boarding school in San Francisco,” Jack explained. “Summer vacations and holidays were spent with Mrs. McPherson’s older sister.”

“All things considered, I can’t say as I blame Mrs. McPherson one bit,” Joe said. For a moment, his thoughts drifted to Lotus O‘Toole, a very good friend of his, now dead, and her son, Timmy. “Had that child stayed with her mother, she would’ve had a very difficult time of it growing up.”

“You speak like someone who knows,” Jack quietly observed.

“Second hand, I suppose,” Joe replied. “A good friend of mine named Lotus O’Toole. She went to work at the Silver Dollar Saloon after both her parents and her maternal grandparents died in a fire that burned down the part of town where the Chinese live. Lotus was only fifteen years old. Like Miss Lindsay, she also had a son born out of wedlock. The both of ‘em had a very rough time of things.

“I tried my best to help, but she always turned me down,” Joe continued. “In HER mind, it was accepting charity and . . . and she w-was bound and determined to pay her own way in this world . . . and Timmy’s w-way--- ” He abruptly broke off, and angrily wiped his eyes against the heels of his hands. “Sorry, she . . . Lotus DIED last Fall, Jack.”

“I’m sorry, Joe,” Jack offered kindly.

“Thanks,” Joe murmured softly. “Lotus and Timmy both had a real rough time of things. It’s good Mrs. McPherson had someplace to send her daughter.”

“Indeed.”

“So . . . what’s become of Margaret McPherson since she had the baby and let her go for adoption?”

“I found out she took the veil not long after . . . . ”

“She’s a nun?!”

Jack nodded. “Nursing order, I think, since she’s presently serving at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Virginia City. My, umm, sources tell me she attends church at Saint Mary’s in the Mountains, but rarely ventures into town otherwise.”

“Margaret . . . Sister Margaret . . . Jack, I don’t think there IS a Sister Margaret serving at Saint Mary’s Hospital,” Joe said.

“When Margaret McPherson took her final vows, she took Sister Anne as her vocation name.”

“Sister Anne?” Joe gasped.

“Then, you DO know her?”

“I know OF her,” Joe replied. “Pa and Stacy said she was one of the nurses who was caring for Cara Lindsay, and--- Dear God! Jack, I just realized . . . Miss McPherson . . . Sister Anne has bad blood . . . and she’s in a nursing order of nuns?! She could’ve spread what she has to . . . who knows? Hundreds of patients? Thousands, maybe?”

“To my knowledge, there’s only two ways someone infected with bad blood can pass it to another,” Jack said quietly. “Through intimate relations, or an infected mother passing it to her child in the womb or when she gives birth.”

“Is there a cure?”

Jack shook his head. “No. Not really . . . and a mutual friend of your brother’s and mine, an old sawbones on one of the ships we crewed together, said that virtually all of the methods people tout as cures DON’T cure and more often than not, they’re actually worse than the disease itself,” he said with a shudder.

“I saw a couple of very good friends die of bad blood,” Joe said somberly. “It‘s . . . let’s just say it‘s not a real good way to go and leave it at that. How much longer do you figure Sister Anne has?”

Jack sighed and shook his head. “Hard to say. Some people live for many years with the disease and end up dying from complications associated with old age,” he replied. “Others go through periods of remission and suffering relapses, and some end up dead within a year or two.”

“Kind of like hauling a whole buckboard full of nitroglycerin over rough terrain, on a hot summer day isn’t it.” Joe’s words were more a statement of fact rather than a question. “A man’s got every chance of reaching his destination alive, IF he’s very careful . . . but there’s every chance he could end up being blown to bits along the way because his horse stumbled . . . one of the wheels of his buckboard rolled over a small rock in the road the wrong way and jostled one of the barrels a little too much . . . or the temperature climbed a mite too high.”

“That pretty well sums it up.”

“I can’t help but feel sorry for Sister Anne,” Joe mused aloud. “Even if she CAN’T pass her illness on to the patients in her care, I kinda doubt she’d be allowed to continue serving as a nurse.”

“Probably not,” Jack agreed.

“You think she knows? About being infected with bad blood, I mean.”

“Chances are, she DOESN’T know,” Jack said, “but she needs to be told . . . sooner as opposed to later.”

Joe nodded. “I s’pose,” he agreed with a doleful sigh. “Jack?”

“Yes, Joe?”

“What are your plans for tomorrow?”

“First off, I’d like to see if I can run down our old ‘friend’, Vivian Crawleigh,” Jack said with a scowl, grimacing upon uttering her name, as if he had just bitten into a morsel of food with an extremely foul taste. “Given her reputation for cruelty, that woman needs to, at the very least, answer for the scars on Miss Lindsay’s back and the burn on her leg your father said was intentionally inflicted.”

“ . . . and perhaps for Miss Lindsay’s death as well.” Joe grimly added.

 

“I’m not sure I like what you gentlemen are implying,” Vivian Crawleigh said primly the following morning. She stood in front of the fireplace in the formal parlor of Tobias Lindsay’s home, clad in a plain long sleeved white cotton blouse, and a full skirt made from wool dyed brown. Her back was straight as a poker and her hands were folded, with fingers tightly interlaced, just below her bosom.

“I’m not implying anything,” Jack Cranston said blandly. “I merely asked a simple, straightforward question.”

Vivian closed her eyes and exhaled the long, drawn out sigh borne of the long suffering. “For the third and LAST time, Mister Cranston, I was hired to look after Mister Lindsay‘s daughter,” she responded, sparing no energy to conceal her annoyance. “I was responsible for preparing her meals . . . seeing that she was properly bathed, dressed, and groomed every morning . . . making sure she took her medicine according to the doctor’s instructions, and that she got a decent night’s sleep.”

“What about discipline?” Jack asked.

“If you’re asking me whether or not I disciplined Mister Lindsay’s daughter, the answer is NO,” Vivian replied, meeting Jack’s steely glare without flinching. “Mister Lindsay made it quite clear that HE would be the one to mete out discipline if his daughter required it.”

“Then . . . YOU’RE saying that Mister Lindsay was responsible for the scars on his daughter’s back and the burn on her leg?” Jack asked.

“I said NOTHING of the kind!” Vivian shot right back, her face all of a sudden a shade or two paler than was the norm. “I don’t appreciate you putting words in my mouth, Mister Cranston.”

“Mrs. Crawleigh, you can’t have it both ways,” Joe countered, his voice deadly calm.

“ . . . and what’s THAT supposed to mean?” Vivian imperiously demanded as she turned and glared murderously down at Joe, seated before her in the middle of the settee directly facing the fireplace.

“Mister Cartwright and I KNOW that Cara Lindsay hasn’t set foot out of this house from the time she was found to be with child until the night she ran away from home,” Jack explained.

“ . . . and how would you know THAT?” Vivian demanded. The wariness in her eyes gave lie to the bluster and blow heard in her tone of voice.

“Your neighbors,” Joe said quietly.

“That busy body at the post office, like as not,” Vivian growled.

“No matter,” Jack said blandly. “The fact remains that you and Mister Lindsay were the only two people who came in contact with that girl. If HE’S not responsible for the scars on her back and the wound on her leg, then YOU are. It‘s as simple as that.”

“Mister Cranston . . . Mister Cartwright . . . this conversation is OVER,” Vivian said curtly. “I trust you can find your own way out?”

Jack rose to his feet with a languid grace surprising in a man of his size. Joe followed suit. “Mrs. Crawleigh, you’re coming with us,” the former said.

“You‘re joking!”

“On the contrary, Ma’am, I‘m dead serious. Mister Cartwright and I placing you under citizen’s arrest.”

“Citizen’s arrest?!” Vivian echoed incredulously. She pulled herself up to the very fullness of her height and slammed her balled fists down on her hips. “On what charge?”

“How about we start with murder, Mrs. Crawleigh?” Joe queried.

“That’s absurd! Now if you gentlemen, and I use that term very loosely, will excuse me, I have a lot to do and--- ”

“It’s not as absurd as you might think, Ma‘am,” Joe argued. “Miss Lindsay’s dead. She died sometime yesterday morning, according to a wire sent by my father. He also told me that the cause of her death was a burn on her leg that became gangrenous.”

“You’re LYING!” Vivian accused, her voice rising.

Joe dug into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a slip of paper folded in half. “Here’s the message I got from the telegraph office,” he said curtly as he unfolded the message and thrust it in her direction. “Read it for yourself.”

Vivian snatched the proffered sheet of paper out of Joe’s hand, and opened it. “All right . . . so Miss Lindsay IS dead, may God rest her soul,” she grudgingly acknowledged, “but I had nothing . . . nothing whatsoever to do with that poor child‘s death.”

“Well, frankly, Ma’am, I find that very difficult to believe,” Joe said grimly. “Taking into account what my sister‘s told me, and--- ”

“What do you WANT from me?” Vivian cried. “Mister Cranston, isn’t it ENOUGH that you and Mister Cartwright’s father have deprived me of my livelihood . . . something I’d worked and trained very hard for . . . something I’d dedicated my entire life to--- ”

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life, which I’ve come to deeply regret, Mrs. Crawleigh,” Jack freely admitted, “but shutting down that so called orphanage you were running out in Ohio doesn’t number among them.”

Vivian’s jaw dropped, and her eyes went round as a pair of large serving platters. Joe was half afraid those orbs of deep violet were going to explode right out of their sockets at any moment.

“The only thing I DO regret is that I failed to unearth sufficient evidence to convict you of murder as well,” Jack continued.

“How DARE you, Sir!” Vivian exclaimed, angry and highly indignant. “How dare you?”

“Ma’am, need I remind you that the evidence against you for cruelty is a matter of public record out in Ohio?” Jack immediately interjected, hoping against hope to silence that self righteous tirade sitting on the tip of her tongue before she could even think of giving it utterance. “Furthermore, if memory serves, you were sentenced to a lengthy prison term, as well.”

“For things I was wrongly accused of,” Vivian immediately shot right back, the instant she found an opening, “on trumped up charges--- ”

“Mrs. Crawleigh, the way I see it,” Jack pressed, raising his voice slightly, “ you have two choices. You can tell us what you know about Miss Lindsay‘s injuries or you can tell it to judge and jury when you go on trial for murdering her, AFTER you‘ve finished serving out your prison sentence in Ohio.”

“You arrogant, insufferable--- ” Vivian growled back, her face beet red.

“Mrs. Crawleigh, if Mister Lindsay’s the one responsible for inflicting that burn on his daughter’s leg, it’s in YOUR best interests to testify against him,” Joe pointed out.

“HOW is my testimony against Mister Lindsay in my best interests, Mister Cartwright?” Vivian demanded. “You’ve made it clear that you’re going to had me over to Sheriff Dudley after we’re through with our little chat . . . . ”

“We’re required to do so by law, Ma’am,” Jack said. “You ARE a wanted fugitive. However, if Mister Lindsay’s guilty of inflicting the burn that led to his daughter’s death, HE will go on trial for murder, not you.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Vivian returned.

“Well, as I recall, you were sentenced to twenty years in prison after being found guilty for cruelty and a few other assorted charges,” Jack replied. “With, oohhhh maybe another five years added for taking flight, you’re looking at twenty-five years, with perhaps a year or two off for good behavior. A long time to be sure, but far better than being sentenced to life in prison or death for murdering Miss Lindsay, don‘t YOU think, Mrs. Crawleigh?”

“I see your point,” Vivian responded with the air of one utterly and completely defeated. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“We’re listening,” Jack said, as he folded his arms across his chest . . . .

 

 

End of Part 3.

 

 

1\. Joe’s romance with Amy Bishop was told in Bonanza Episode #11, “The Truckee Strip,” written by Herman Groves.

2\. Bad Blood was another name for syphilis during Bonanza’s time period.


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